


Stuck in the Middle of Nowhere with You

by Lavendermagik



Series: Stuck in the Middle [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Friends to ?, Humor, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 40,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22362847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavendermagik/pseuds/Lavendermagik
Summary: The timeline changed, so why does Loki still remember a life he didn't live? And what's a girl gotta do to convince him to let her go home?
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Stuck in the Middle [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609924
Comments: 196
Kudos: 263





	1. I'm not doing this again.

“Oh no, not again. Kidnap me once, shame on you. Kidnap me twice… more shame on you!” 

“Is this your way of saying you haven’t missed me?”

You narrowed your eyes at the man you’d frankly never expected to see again. Part of you wanted to demand an explanation for why he’d risked returning to earth just to snatch you from your apartment. But that part was much smaller than the part that was merely irritated (and a little afraid, though you wouldn’t admit it) at the renewed interruption to your life. “You know what? I’m not doing this again. You take me back right now.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”

“Fine, I’ll take myself back.” You spotted a pair of gigantic doors that appeared to lead out of this decrepit, medieval castle he’d transported you to. Loki watched, seemingly unperturbed, as you headed for this presumed exit.

“I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“See, I don’t really care what you recommend. Good luck in all you’re assuredly illegal endeavors. Peace out.” With a little more effort than you’d like to acknowledge, you shoved open the doors. You made it three steps out onto some kind of elaborate front patio when you stumbled to a stop. Cold filled your ribcage and conversely began to burn away at your insides. You tried to gasp in pain, but there was nothing available to pull in, even though _something_ was whipping your hair and clothes around like you stood on the edge of a hurricane. As your vision began to blur, you saw that the whole idea had been pointless, because whatever stairs once led up to this castle had crumbled away, leaving behind a sheer cliff face.

You felt something at the back of your neck, and then a sharp tug at your collar had you tripping backwards into relative warmth. Sweet, breathable air filled your lungs in three grating breaths. The burning in your midsection faded, though the memory left behind a tightness that took longer to dispel. 

“Do you care now?”

You stepped away, and he let you go easily. You wrapped your arms around yourself and turned to find him standing with his hands behind his back as if preparing to give a school report. Or maybe he was conjuring a dagger to stab you again. It was hard telling. “Where are we?” 

“A planet orbiting a dying star. Its residents fled long ago when it first became inhospitable. I happened upon it in my recent travels.”

“Is that what the kids are calling a fugitive state these days?”

“This castle is protected, but stepping outside its walls will surely result in your demise.”

“Great. So what am I? Hostage? Leverage?”

“Oh, I doubt anyone will be able to discern what happened to you, if they realize you’re gone at all. I chose this place specifically so we would not have to deal with any interruptions.” 

“Interruptions to what?”

“I seek answers.”

“What’s the question?”

“You.”

“What does that mean?” You sounded desperate to even your own ears, but you thought it was probably warranted. One minute you’d been setting your bag down on its designated table right inside the door of your apartment, ready for a glorious evening with your two favorite men (Ben and Jerry) and a movie ( _literally_ Netflix and chill, which was hilarious at the time), and the next you found yourself re-abducted by everyone’s favorite warmonger who, instead of giving you a straight answer, was being a drama queen. You figured it was natural to be a little out of sorts.

In lieu of answering (see: drama queen), he waved a hand, which had you tensing all over again. Instead of an attack, images appeared all around you – tiny movie screens each playing something different. Despite your mistrust, your curiosity had you stepping closer. You watched a scene play out where you stood back to back with him as strange, vaguely humanoid creatures surrounded you.

“Dark Elves,” he supplied.

You glanced at the other images, all containing him and you, sometimes Thor and Jane or the Avengers or any other host of characters you’d never seen before. “What is this?”

“From what I can tell… memories.”

That surprised a sharp, huffed laugh out of you. “Right. Memories of things that didn’t happen.” You leaned to the side to look closer at a scene involving an ornate, golden behemoth of a building. “Is that Asgard? I’ve never even been to Asgard. I’d remember a castle that looks so much like a pipe organ. Except this one…” A few steps brought you to a frame showing the 0-8-4 in New Mexico. You watched again as Loki tried and failed to lift the hammer. “This was the first time I saw you. You made Thor cry, and then I followed you here.”

The Loki on screen looked up at one of the balconies to see you staring at him.

“I was veiled,” present Loki said, strangely calm. “No mere mortal should have been able to detect my presence.”

“It _was_ strange that no one else noticed you. And this.” You watched yourself give a defeated Loki his drink. “This was only a few months ago, right before you escaped.”

“Which brings us to an interesting plot twist.” A flick of his fingers shifted the images until new ones rested before you. Loki being led out of the building. Loki blasting off with Thor. Loki standing chained before, presumably, his father. And then, for some unexplained reason, you appeared in court as well. “As you can see, there is a slight divergence in events.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I believe what you see here are memories from another timeline.”

“That’s crazy.”

“What other explanation is there?”

“You have ridiculously realistic and oddly specific daydreams.”

“My last daydreams left me the uncontested ruler of multiple realms. Do you really think they would have lessened so much in scale as to focus on a single human woman?”

“Hey, it’s hard to guess at what motivates a psychopath. Hold on…” You stepped to the side, raised your finger to an image of you wielding a gun on that rainbow bridge in Asgard.

“Don't-” Loki’s warning came too late. Your finger made contact, and abruptly you found yourself standing in the middle of the scene.

“Woah…” Chaos and carnage surrounded you, but no one took notice of your appearance.

“May I suggest in the future you do not touch things you don’t understand?” Loki stood at the same angle from you as before. His illusion must have expanded to fill the space.

“Then how would I ever figure anything out? There!” You pointed to your gun as it skittered over the bridge’s edge. Peripherally, you saw yourself collapse with a bloodied shoulder, but that was only mildly distracting. An explosion came from where the gun had disappeared. “I knew it! That model only exists in my head – I haven’t even started on the blueprints. The self destruct feature is meant to be tied to proximity, but I haven’t worked out the mechanics yet. How could you possibly know about it?”

He didn’t say anything, which was, of course, unusual, so you turned to see him giving you the facial equivalent of ‘see, I told you.’ You shot him a glare. “That doesn’t prove anything. Besides, if these are your memories, why are they from a third person perspective?”

“That I cannot speak to. This is how I received them.” The world shifted back to the castle and all the smaller screens.

“Received?”

“As I awoke one morning.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Yet another mystery.”

“Okay, just for theoretical kicks, let’s go with your hypothesis for a minute. What could even cause multiple timelines?”

“Usually, some fool goes to the past and interferes, which creates a split, as one cannot change their own history.” His lips curled into a smirk when you shot him a look. “No, that fool was not me. I am quite impressive, but I do not count time travel among my abilities.”

“All right, so who decided to go fiddling around in the past?” You stepped over to the screen displaying Loki's arrest. “Can you make one of what actually happened so I can compare?”

He held a hand out like a lazy Vanna White, and a new screen popped up.

“Much obliged." Oh, goodie, your very own spot the differences puzzle for the fabric of reality. “There, that man. He’s in our timeline, but not in this other one.” You held up a hand, but then paused to look at him with eyebrows high. “May I?”

“Oh, by all means, let yourself right in.”

He was being snotty, but you decided to take him at face value. The scene emerged around you, people rushing in all directions as Tony collapsed. You remembered hearing that he’d had a mild cardiac event. You, of course, had already been removed from the scene. Via medical evac. 

“Medic! Give these guys some help!”

“I know that voice.” You stepped towards the armored guard who’d shouted. His face was blurred, as if his presence was only half-remembered, but you recognized the stance, the posture, the body language. You glanced at the man on the ground and then back at the guard. “Tony?”

“Ah, so it was Stark then? That makes an alarming amount of sense.”

“But Tony wouldn’t have come back to help you escape.”

You jumped at a sudden resounding bang from your right. The Hulk stormed out of a stairwell, knocking possible-future Tony to the ground.

“No,” Loki watched impassively as the Tesseract slid to a stop at the feet of his bound counterpart, “that appears to have been a rather fortuitous accident.”

“So why, then?”

“I might have the answer to that.” He held out his hand in offering. You didn’t move. “You put yourself in this memory. If you wish to accompany me to another, you must be anchored.”

“I feel like that’s some pretty shoddy reasoning for wanting to hold my hand.” You made a theatrical display of rolling your head to the side in defeat before taking the necessary steps to put your hand in his. The bright building turned dark, replaced by the inside of a massacred space ship. You recognized Thor bound in scrap metal nearby, though he was down an eye and a lot of hair. And there was Loki, slowly approaching a large purple man(?) and pledging his undying fealty. You saw the dagger form in his hand moments before he attempted and failed to stab the giant. Then the man(.) casually took hold of his neck and then squeezed until a crack sounded. 

Your breath came sharply and then stalled as the scene froze. “What happened?”

“I died, you see, so that would be the end of this memory. You can let go now.”

You hadn’t even realized how tightly you were squeezing his hand. You released and took a large step away. “So you can remember yourself dying? That seems horrible.”

“I merely have the images of the memories, not the accompanying sensations. It is akin to watching it happen to someone else.”

“Still…” You looked again at his blue face and bloodshot eyes, then away when the nausea grew unbearable. “What does this have to do with Tony's time travelling?”

“Look at the gauntlet Thanos wears.”

“Thanos? You mean big ugly here?”

“He is called the Mad Titan because he has been attempting to balance the universe one planet at a time by exterminating half the population. He is the one who sent me to earth in exchange for retrieving the Tesseract, or as you see it here, the Infinity Stone known as Space.”

“This is what was inside the Tesseract?” You made yourself stand right next to the frozen execution in order to get a better view of the gauntlet. “What’s this purple one?”

“The Power Stone. With these two he is already the most powerful creature in the universe. If he were to obtain all six, he would be able to wipe out half of all life as he intends with little more than a thought.”

“Okay, threat of apocalyptic proportions – yeah, that would be enough to send Tony back in time.” You couldn’t keep your eyes from returning to Loki's death face, and you forcibly swallowed your lunch back down. “Can we… not be here anymore?”

“Squeamish?”

“Sure, let’s call it that.”

He obviously derived pleasure from your discomfort, but he still returned you to the castle once more. 

“So Tony goes back in time and accidentally lets you get the Tesseract. This fundamentally changes the course of events so that you never get arrested, I never go to Asgard, and we never, what? Become BFFs and go on crazy space adventures together? But now you have all the memories from that other timeline.”

“That would appear to sum up our current situation, despite your near-indecipherable manner of speaking.”

You stood staring at him. He stood staring at you. You raised one fist in the air. “Go team? Another case cracked, time to hit the bar? Preferably one on earth?”

“I do believe your celebration is premature.”

“What are you talking about? Tony broke the timeline because Genocidal Giant did something bad in his future. Mystery solved.”

“The cause of the timeline divergence is of very little interest to me.”

“Then what am I doing here?” Your tone was verging on desperate again, and you fought to reign it back in. “You can’t possibly think I know where you got these memories from.”

“I am less concerned with the source of this phenomenon and more concerned about this.” Another wave of his hand, and a few select screens aligned before you. 

One of those Dark Elves attempted to stab you in the back, but Loki blocked the blow. 

You were flying through some Mario Party warp tunnel with Thor and Loki, followed by a woman with a dead tree on her head. She threw something in your direction, but Loki snatched you to him and took the blow instead, knocking you both through the glowing wall. 

You were on the spaceship with Thanos, except earlier, while Loki still lived. He held you behind him as he faced down the Mad Titan until the man was tackled by something equally as large and Loki dove out of the way, once again protectively wrapped around you. 

“I appear to be repeatedly putting myself in harm's way on your behalf.” Loki’s face was still relatively placid, though you could detect distaste in his eyes as they moved between images.

“Okay?” You looked between him and the screens. “That does seem off brand for you, but what’s it got to do with us here now?”

“This is weakness of which I thought myself incapable.”

“So you in another life end up being less of a jerk. That _literally_ is then and this is now. If you don’t want to be that guy, then don’t be that guy.”

“That is my intention, but I must understand it if I wish to avoid the same fate in this timeline.”

“What’s to understand? All this stuff won’t happen to you, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“You have already happened.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“Congratulations, you have finally arrived at the relevant question.”

“You’re actually blaming me for… this.” You gestured at the screens still replaying the myriad of times he’d bodily blocked you from harm.

“It must be you. Why else would you be the focus of each memory?” He sauntered across the distance separating you, and you had to tense all your muscles to keep from stepping away. You wouldn’t let him think he’d made you retreat. “All you need do is tell me what makes your measly life worth saving, and then, and only then, you may return from whence you came.”

“Wow, ‘whence,’ all right. Look, I don’t know what would make you want to save me, unless you’re in the market for some high-quality explosives. I’m not even high enough on the S.H.I.E.L.D. food chain for Fury to take my concerns about inscrutable alien technology seriously. Whatever all of this is, it’s on you, not me.”

He stared down at you for an uncomfortable amount of time, mouth thin. “You will find dishonesty to be an unwise course of action with me.”

“What’s there to lie about? Yeah, I’ve made some pretty cool gadgets for my relatively young age, but in a world that contains Tony Stark, even that’s not very impressive.”

“You try my patience.”

“Oh, don’t make me Groucho Marx you. ‘You must try mine someti-’” You cut off when his hand clamped around the side of your neck, his thumb pressed to your throat so that it moved with your swallow. His fingers were so long and thin that you easily forgot the strength in them. Nary a flinch and the structural integrity of your neck would be severely compromised. 

You expected him to threaten you, but instead the hall melted into the planet where you'd been fighting the Dark Elves. He turned you to look at Thor cradling his body. For a moment the dying Loki’s eyes slid to where you stood nearby with Jane. “There,” said the Loki who currently held your fragile human neck, “you knew.”

“Knew what? That you weren’t dead? It’s kind of obvious.”

“Thor was fooled.”

“Thor wants to believe the best of you. I don't have such proclivities.”

The scene shifted again, but this one was familiar. Loki sat on the ground of his impromptu underground lab with his scepter in his lap. His stare was vacant until he abruptly jerked to the side. 

“You okay there, Jafar?” You sat against a pillar with your knees pulled up to your chest, looking dingy and pale and generally sulky. “Who you talkin’ to?”

“Now who says I’m talking to anyone?” he asked, tone carefully measured and a tad condescending. 

You rolled your eyes and laid your head down on your knees. “Forget it. When is Clint coming back?”

A shift once again to the unfamiliar, some kind of gaudy apartment.

“Help.” You rounded a corner, arms bent towards your back at awkward angles. “I can’t get this stupid dress to hang right.”

“You really are a helpless creature.” Loki appeared, turning you to untangle the fabric himself.

“Shut up.” You dropped your hands with a huff. “I didn’t ask to get stuck on an alien garbage planet. I didn’t ask to get involved in your family problems at all. I don’t even know why Strange brought me in when he was just going to summon Thor anyway.”

“Perhaps he initially sought to avoid interaction with my bore of a brother. The more pressing question is how you came to know such an obnoxious wizard in the first place.” He stepped back, and you smoothed your hands over your hips.

“New York went crazy, again, in this really psychedelic way, but then no one remembered it. So I tracked down the Sanctum, and I got a quick TL;DR of the mystic arts.”

“You say you alone remembered these unusual goings on?”

As an outside observer, you could see the blatant curiosity in that Loki’s face, but the other you still had her back to him and answered as if only half paying attention to the conversation. “Yeah, Dr. Strange thought it was weird, too.” Satisfied with your dress, you turned to face him. “Do I really have to go? Can’t I just stay here for once?”

“I have no desire to answer questions about your whereabouts all night. Besides, it would be a shame to waste all the trouble we’ve gone through to get your outfit in order.” You grimaced, but instead of reacting with annoyance, Loki smiled in a way that was almost fond. “How about if when we return I finish the Alfheim text?”

“Fine.” You sighed and allowed him to lead you out the door even as you muttered a last, “Stupid, complicated, alien clothes…”

You, real you, stared in the general direction of the empty doorway until Loki pulled his hand away and the scene faded back to a two-dimensional image. Your voice had an embarrassing tremble when you asked, “What was that?”

“Yet another example of your inexplicable knowledge of things you should be incapable of knowing.”

“No, not…” You shook your head as if to clear it. “That last one. Where were we? What were we doing there?”

“We seem to have been trapped on Sakaar, or an ‘alien garbage planet,’ as you so eloquently put it.” You must not have been blinking enough, because he turned to face you fully. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“I told you dishonesty is unwise. I am the god of lies, after all.”

“I don’t… look, I already told you I can’t help you. I don’t know how I know when you’re full of BS or when wizards or whatever alter reality. I’m sorry, honestly sorry, that you got stuck with a bunch of memories of things that never happened. That’s some hardcore suckage. But there's nothing I can do. Can I please go home now?”

He was scrutinizing you again, and you wanted to punch him. That probably wouldn’t help your case, though, and this whole situation would be harder to handle with a broken hand. Finally, finally, he simply said, “No.”

“Are you kidding me? What more do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

You massaged your temples, eyes squeezed shut. “It’s really not that big of a deal. I just… I broke protocol.”

“By sharing a living space on an alien planet with a wanted criminal?”

“Apparently, that might as well be my Tuesday at this point. No, when we… went out to wherever we were going, I didn’t have my gun on me. S.H.I.E.L.D. dictates that all agents take at least a sidearm into any hostile environment.”

“You obviously did not consider the environment hostile.”

“I was stepping out with a wanted criminal – you _are_ a hostile environment.”

“Then perhaps it simply did not match your dress.” He met your glare with a look of impatience. “The answer is quite simple, if you would only allow yourself to accept it. You came to suffer the same weakness as I.”

You were shaking your head before he’d finished the sentence. “No, that’s not possible.”

“As if it is any more likely that I would come to care about your welfare in any significant way?”

“I don’t know what is likely for you! What I do know is that you are just… a terrible person. Like, probably the worst I’ve ever met. Whatever went on in the bizarro world, they aren’t us! Us is me and you, you who all of three months ago hurt _so_ many people, people I care about.”

Your impassioned displeasure seemed to amuse him. “How _is_ Agent Barton?”

“I wouldn’t know. He changed to a different weapons technician.” Your voice caught and forced you to take a deep breath. “He feels so guilty he won’t even talk to me, all because of what you made him do. On top of that you stabbed my mentor through the chest. Tony almost died flying a nuclear weapon into _your_ space hole. And let’s not forget the multitudes of people who died simply as collateral damage. If you think any part of me is ever going to care about you even a little bit, feel safe enough in your presence to voluntarily leave my gun at home, you are delusional. Maybe delusional enough to cook up all of this. Did you finally realize how extremely unpleasant you are, so you had to imagine a timeline where someone actually liked you?”

You could see him getting angry now, too, as he stalked back into your space. The lizard part of your brain was blaring the alarm of danger, but the irrational, competitive part refused to let him win. “You in your boundless arrogance believe that I would stoop so low as to imagine an entire fantasy world for the likes of you? You and all your people measure less than a single ant in my eyes. I am a god and rightful king!”

“You are an overgrown child! You didn’t get your way, and then you threw a tantrum. Unfortunately for the rest of us, your tantrum amounted to widespread death and destruction, but that doesn’t make it any less the actions of a spoiled brat!”

“You should remember to whom you speak.”

“I remember, oh rightful king. From what I can tell, at least two worlds rejected your rule. Can’t really be a king without a kingdom, now can we? You constantly overreach just to get knocked on your royal hindquarters again and again, but you’re too afraid of your own irrelevance to admit that you’re not cut out to be the conqueror. In the end, you’re still just a coward!“

He had you by the throat faster than you could track, this time with intent. He slammed you onto a table near a staircase that in its heyday had probably held decorations. Even as your back was registering the pain of impact, your hand was moving of its own accord. It wrapped around his hand, which you were now sure held a dagger pointed at your ribs. You knew he chose to stop, whether from surprise or malicious pleasure in prolonging this precariously balanced moment, because you surely didn’t have the brute force to compete with him. Still, even with your voice rasping under the pressure of his hand, you managed to spit out, “Learn a new trick.”

And then he did. Or at least he did something you’d not seen him do yet. His rage-filled face froze and then went slack as his eyes lost focus. His hand was still present at your throat, though with much less force, but he seemed… gone. Seconds later he jerked away from you and fell to his knees, gripping his head as if in great pain. You sat up, rubbing your bruised larynx and eyeing his curled figure. “Hey? You…okay?”

He merely grunted. You tilted a little, trying to get a look at his face. “You’re not, like, dying, are you? Because I don’t know how to get home on my own.”

Nothing. Not even a snide remark. You slid off the table and crouched next to him.

“Hey…” Tentatively you laid a few fingertips on his shoulder. This, it turns out, was the wrong thing to do. His arm shot towards you again, slower this time, enough so that you managed to dodge a little. Still, his dagger caught your arm and left a neat line across your bicep that quickly welled with blood. “Okay… ouch…”

His face looked so aghast that you were distracted from your own indignation. His blade hit the ground with a clatter, and while you were still staring at it, you abruptly found yourself pressed to his chest, stiff leather digging into your cheek as his arms closed around you. You tensed, waiting for him to python you into oblivion, but though tight his grip wasn’t even exactly unpleasant.

“Uh... what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded like he was gritting his teeth. He felt like he might be trembling.

“…are you going to stab me again?”

His arms tightened fractionally. “No.”

“Okay. Cool. You know, you’re generally a pretty scary guy, but now you’re scaring me in a whole new way.”

“I am inclined to agree with you.”


	2. Oh, that... sucks.

“Do you think… you might be done soon? It's just, my arm…” The cut on your arm had begun to sting in an ever-stronger bid for attention.

Loki released you so quickly you almost fell over. His eyes landed on the red streaks that already trailed down your skin. He surged to his feet, and you would have followed except abruptly you were airborne. “Woah, hey, what’re you doing?”

“I believe the castle’s healing chambers still contain medical supplies.”

“That’s great, but you know you cut my arm, right? My legs are still fully functional. You don’t have to carry me.”

He stared straight ahead, but you could see his mouth twitch, fighting with what he wanted to say. “I must.”

You waited a beat to see if he’d elaborate, but no luck. “Is this some kind of Asgardian stroke?”

“I am not Asgardian. I am Jotun by birth. A frost giant. ”

“That really doesn’t change the nature of my question.”

He grimaced, and then so abruptly you didn’t have time to move, he leaned down to press his forehead to yours. You could still feel him walking, but now you were surrounded by darkness. A ways in front of you stood the Loki who was currently carrying you and another, much more relaxed looking Loki with longer hair. 

“Temper, temper. You’ll be pleased to know you do gain some control of your anger over the years.” Long-haired Loki appeared to be taunting himself.

“And who are you? My future?”

“Ah, no. I come from a future we will not share.”

“The timeline before Stark’s interference.”

“If that’s what causes the divergence for you.”

“Why are you contacting me?”

“To stop you from doing something you’ll regret.”

“Silencing one pathetic mortal? You and I both know there are plenty more where she came from.”

“No, there isn't.” The other man’s eyes dropped. “We only get one of her.”

“To what difference? She is human. Her life will be but a breath either way.”

“You have no idea how much can be wrung from a single breath. Nor did I, and now I am paying the price.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am dying at the hands of Thanos, as you have seen. I can no longer protect her conventionally, so I must ensure her life is preserved by any means possible.”

“Why?” Loki’s question was far too loud, echoing back off of nothing. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, like he wanted to strike out at himself. “Why do you care what becomes of one wretched human? Why have you allowed this weakness to infect you?”

“Because she is ours.” He said it so simply, like an easy and undeniable fact of life. “You know this to be true. That’s why you kept her with you for so long.”

He was smirking again, and you saw your timeline’s Loki flush with irritation. You wondered if for the first time he understood why he infuriated almost everyone around him.

“Ridiculous.”

“One with so little to his name should not be so rashly disparaging of what he does have.”

“She means nothing to me.”

“What does it say about the god of lies when he cannot deceive himself?”

“Release me and I’ll prove it.”

“Well that would completely defeat my purposes, wouldn’t it? I believe you may require a bigger push.”

“What do you-”

“Keep her well. Do not fail me. This is, after all, your dying wish.”

The image faded as Loki strode through the door of what must have been the healing chambers he’d mentioned. You found yourself grateful for his hold as you were now quite dizzy, probably because you seemed to be breathing so erratically. He set you down on the alien equivalent of an exam table and began rummaging through cupboards, never looking at you. You took a carefully controlled breath through your nose and breathed out, “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Nor do I.”

“So you keep saying. What’s that?” You eyed the jar he held warily. It was rather dusty, and when he pulled his fingers out he brought along a sizable glob of goop.

“Healing salve.”

“Doesn’t look fresh.”

“Such things do not lose potency with age.”

“You sure that’s not going to peel my skin off or something?”

“There are much more effective methods if I wished to remove your skin.”

“That’s not comforting.” You allowed him to apply the goop and wrap the injury, mostly because he was still being weird. You waited until he was finished to continue your interrogation. “What was that before? Another memory?“

“A message. As I was dying I sent my memories of that timeline to every other version of myself.” His eyes remained downcast, though his hands dug into the table on either side of you. You leaned backwards in an attempt to preserve any amount of personal space.

“How many versions are there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay. And you, he, did it… to make sure you would protect me? Even if in this reality you don’t like me at all?”

He raised his head to lock eyes with you, his face tight with distress. “Yes.”

“That’s… nice? I don’t…” He was far too close, his face far too near your own, and his eyes were burning so hot they might as well be glowing. “What is going on with you, you you, right now? Why the sudden… intensity? And proximity?”

“I believe I have been given the… emotions to go with the memories, the extra push he referred to, and this is the reaction. I would apologize, but I cannot be sure if that’s my choice or simply what _he_ would want.”

“Oh, that…” you paused, fumbling for the correct word and then gave up, “sucks.”

“Indeed.” Even his smirk looked strained.

This prolonged eye contact thing was getting old. “I don’t mean to be a jerk when you’re obviously going through something, but I don’t supposed you could maybe… step back a skitch?”

He glanced down at his hands, which were white from nail to knuckles, and slowly and deliberately released his grip and took a step back.

“Uh, thanks.” You hopped off the table, just in case you’d have to move quickly to avoid being cornered again. “So… what now?”

He turned and began to walk out of the room, then paused and looked back when you didn’t immediately follow. ”Come,” he said with barely restrained irritation, and then took off again. You rolled your eyes and jogged a few steps to catch up.

“Where are we going?”

”Are you hungry?

“What?”

“It’s a simple question. A yes or no would suffice.”

“No, I ate just before the kidnapping.”

“Thirsty?”

“Not really, no.”

“Tired?”

“No!” You planted your feet and glared at his back until he halted as well. “What is up with you?”

“I am merely ensuring the sustenance of your frail body.”

“Knock it off. It’s weird. Other you said protect me, not mother hen me.”

“I am merely trying to quiet this new, persistent nagging in my mind that insists I see to your current constitution.”

“Oh…” Before you could think of something sympathetic to say, you noticed a slight vibration tickling up your legs, like the distant passing of a train. “Do you feel that?”

In lieu of answering, he pushed open the nearest door and strode into what might have once been an opulent bedroom. You caught up as he reached a balcony, the familiar wind kicking up, but it wasn’t as devastating inside the castle’s protective barrier. You tracked Loki’s gaze, but it still took you a minute to pick out the approaching figures, because they appeared to be the same color as the mountains they were scaling at an impressive speed. They looked small but also far away, and you had a feeling both were about to change.

“I thought you said the planet was uninhabitable?”

“I distinctly said inhospitable.”

“Those things don’t look terribly hospitable either.”

“Thus how they survive on such a planet.”

“I feel like maybe we should move.”

He didn’t say so, but you figured he must agree, because he immediately wrapped an arm around your middle and leapt back into the abandoned bedroom. The balcony on which you stood was summarily obliterated by a creature the size of a small office building who very well may have been formed from the same stuff as the mountain.

“Any idea what that is?”

“A breed of giant by all appearances. Perhaps a distant cousin.”

The thing roared and smashed its massive fist into the outer wall, sending stones flying. Loki still had his arm around you, hand gripping your far elbow like you might make a break for it at any moment, and he turned to more fully block you even as you flinched away from the flying debris.

“What’d you do, forget to send him his bar mitzva money?” You watched the thing hit the wall again and noticed cracks spidering through the ceiling. “Can they get in here?”

“The barrier is soley meant to keep out the atmosphere.”

“So it’s weather-proof and not monster-proof. Perfect.” Part of the ceiling collapsed, leaving a large enough space for the giant to step in, just as two more appeared over the edge. Loki abruptly shoved you towards the hall door and re-summoned his dagger which he used to strike the closest giant. Unfortunately, this appeared to do very little aside from scratch the blade. “You know, if I had my gun I could actually be useful right now.”

“If you’d had your gun you would have already shot me.” Multiple images of his body began to appear until they near-filled the room. The giants swatted at them, confusion apparent as their craggy fists passed right through.

“Well now I guess we’ll never know!” You held both your hands up in a sign of frustration, though he wasn’t really paying attention. When something heavy landed in your right palm you were forced to fumble rather inelegantly in order not to drop it. “Did you just teleport my gun from earth? And… lip gloss?”

“Your bag is quite cluttered. You may wish to find a better place to keep your weapon in the future. For the moment, I would suggest choosing your target wisely. You may dislike me, but our friends here will not take such an interest in your well-being.”

“Noted.” You rearranged your fingers, getting the right placement to shift the gun to a setting that would do the most damage. Your eyes swept over the Loki’s doubles until you found the original. “Get down!”

He dropped without question, which might have been peculiar, but then he had just handed you a weapon. Your blast hit the giant before Loki right in the chest and launched it straight out the hole it’d ripped in the wall. You felt the familiar whir as the gun began to recharge, preparing to fire again, but then the wall to your left exploded. Stray stones hit you like multiple, small fists, and one knocked the gun away right before a freezing hand closed around you. You heard Loki shout, and peripherally you saw him turn as if to come to your aid, only to be forced into battle with the other two giants.

The one who held you lifted you toward its face and… sniffed? “Okay, weird, dude.” With nothing else available, you shifted your grip on the lip gloss, which you _had_ managed to hang on to, and jammed the tube into its eye. It dropped you with a screech, and you hit the ground on a roll, grabbing your gun on the way. You turned back and hit it with a blast that knocked it back through two more walls. Then, rearranging your fingers, you turned the weapon on the other two and delivered a wider shot just strong enough to send them stumbling off the edge.

Loki watched you grimace at the eye gore on your hand. “That was… resourceful.”

“Nat says anything is a weapon if you believe in it enough. It’s too bad though – they discontinued that shade.”

“And it wasn’t even his color.”

You snorted a laugh, and he looked oddly pleased with himself. At least until he sucked in a violent gasp of air and lurched forward, something dark and sharp breaking through his clothing just below and to the left of his breastbone. He looked down at the protrusion with almost comical confusion. “Oh dear…”


	3. Takes one to know one.

He stumbled forward again, and without conscious thought you dove to catch him as he hit his knees. From this new angle you saw the source of the metal – he seemed to have been impaled by the twisted remains of the balcony’s wrought iron banister. The ground shook anew as the giant who must have thrown the projectile pulled himself up fully and started for you. You fumbled with your gun, aiming over Loki's shoulder to blast the creature back, but not before it took another chunk out of the roof. A sharp sound filled the room, and the cracks in the ceiling spread. You barely managed to clench your fingers close together and get the gun over your head before a large chunk broke free right above you. A blue barrier knocked the stone off its course, but the resulting impact sent tremors all the way to your shoulder blade.

“Such a versatile tool,” Loki muttered into your collarbone. 

“Takes one to know one.” Two more monsters appeared and rushed you. With no time, you could only drop the shield and suck in a breath as they rammed against it. “This would be a really great time to warp out of here.”

Loki waved a hand through the air, and the Tesseract appeared. A cloud of smoke and light enveloped you, and then you were in another room entirely. From the almost oppressive silence, you’d hazard a guess that you weren’t in the castle at all.

“Just out of curiosity, why didn't you start with that?”

“The Tesseract lets off a rather noticeable surge of energy with each use, and as you enjoy pointing out I am a wanted criminal.”

“So where are we now?”

“Somewhere that will hopefully prevent my demise. In the case there should be a stone. Retrieve it without setting off any alarms.”

You looked to where he indicated, squinting through the darkness at the sheen of glass. You rose, eyeing similar cases and getting an inkling of dread at the familiarity of the scene. “Is this… is this a museum? _Are you trying to get me to rob a museum?_ ”

“Alternatively, you could leave me here to perish and hope that whoever finds you come morning will be willing to return you to earth and not set you up in a display of your own.”

“Seriously, you are the _worst_.” You crept towards the far side of the room, hoping the floor didn’t contain sensors.

“Remember the alarms.”

“ _Remember the alarms._ I’m robbing a museum, of course I’m going to watch out for alarms. I’ve seen movies.”

The case was pretty simple: glass on five sides, black base, placed a few inches out from the wall. There were a couple different things on display, but you figured what you were going for was lying on a pillow to the right. You glanced over all the sides, trying to locate any trip wires or pressure points. You set your gun on the floor and reached out one hand, but hesitated, realizing that this was an alien planet and may have security measures you’d never thought of.

“By all means, take your time.”

With a deep breath and a prayer, you began to run your hands over the case. You almost flinched when you remembered that fingerprints were something cat burglars were supposed to think about, but then you decided you probably wouldn’t come up in any database on this planet. You could feel a slight vibration that spoke to an electrical current within, but the only physical things holding the case closed were clasps on either side.

“I might remind you that we are on a deadline.”

“Did you seriously just make a pun right now?”

Though maybe he was just fronting to cover up his actual level of pain. He did look pretty uncomfortable, all tilted and pale. Not that he wasn’t always pale. He just wasn’t usually so clammy, at least in your limited experience. Either way, expediency was probably still the way to go. His dying would be inconvenient. 

You picked up your gun again, slid your middle and ring fingers together, and took aim. You heard Loki shift behind you. “Please don’t tell me you’re simply going to blast the thing. I took you to be more adept than that.”

“You are quite the master of the backhanded compliment. Now shut up – I’m trying to concentrate.” You pulled the trigger and sent an EMP surging through the case. It made a whining noise, but not anything as loud as an alarm. After that, the clasps were laughably easy to undo. Whoever designed this security really should have included contingencies. As soon as the stone was in hand, you replaced the cover and the whining faded.

Loki was almost smirking when you returned to his side. You rolled your eyes but chose not to comment. “Now what?”

Silently, he held out his hand. You handed the stone over and watched him curiously. He proceeded to crush the stone like it was made of chalk and sprinkle the resulting dust over his wound. At first nothing happened, and you worried that Loki had done little more than invite infection. But then the bloody hole began to close as the iron protruding from his chest dissolved. Soon, Loki was sitting up straighter and stretching as the rest of the banister clattered to the ground behind him.

“What was that thing anyway? We didn’t, like, destroy some priceless, irreplaceable artifact, did we?”

“Is my life not worth as much?” Loki look at you expectantly, but your expression didn’t change. He rolled his eyes and pulled himself to his feet. “It was an Asgardian healing stone. They can easily replace it should they wish to.”

“So that’s it? You’re good, then?”

“I am no longer in mortal peril, yes.”

“Then you can take me home?” It was a question that came out more as a statement. But he was looking at you sideways, hands busily smoothing down his tunic or whatever it was. “You can take me home, right?”

His eyes dropped. “I can’t.”

“Come again?”

“I cannot take you back.”

“Why not? You’ve already figured out… everything. I serve no further purpose. Why won’t you take me home?”

“I would, believe me I would,” his face was so distressed and angry that you did believe him, “but as of this moment I am… incapable.”

You stood flabbergasted, watching him clench and unclench his fingers. Your position and his fully struck you for the first time. “Alternate timeline you really screwed us both, huh?”

“In so many words.”

“Okay… so what do we do? What do you need to fix this?”

He looked surprised. “You would help me?”

“I just want to go home, and since you’re the only ticket out of town, yeah, I’ll do what I can. So what? You need me to be super annoying so you don’t want to protect me anymore?”

“No, you’ve been doing a sufficient job thus far to very little effect.”

“Wow, okay, ouch again. You'd think you'd have learned not to bite the hand that feeds you, or at least offers to help cook.”

“What I require is access to resources.”

“Animal, mineral, or epistemic?” You returned his put out look with one of your own. “I don’t know how you cast your spells. Do you need a cauldron?”

He straightened his posture so he could look down his nose at you. “I’m not a witch.”

“I’m your wife,” you continued automatically, only to wave your hands when he jerked back like you’d come at him. “No, sorry, pop culture reference. It’s a movie, on earth, not an insinuation. Breathe, dude.”

“Perhaps you should take more care in what you say from this point forward.”

“That doesn’t sound like something I’d do.” You tracked him as he began to pace, the sparse light in the room flickering over him like tiny spotlights. “So what kind of resources are we talking?”

“Specific books held in a particular library.”

“Which would be located where?”

“Asgard.”

“Oh… I don’t suppose you could just order them from Amazon?”

“If you don’t refrain from referring to things native to only your world, I will be forced to remove your ability to speak.”

“What about some kind of shared library system? Do you ever loan out books to other libraries?” 

He halted and looked as if he might snap at you, but then paused. Was he actually considering your proposal? Before he could answer, a noise came from down one of the hallways leading into the room. You both turned towards it, then back to each other. Your voice was much lower when you said, “We probably shouldn’t hang out in the place we just robbed.”

“ _You_ robbed. I was innocently bleeding out on the floor.”

“You were an enthusiastic accomplice, nay, mastermind, and that argument will most assuredly hold up in court. Now make with the warping.”

Once again, you had no idea where you landed. It appeared to be an alley, and bellowing from nearby about wares and prices indicated a potential marketplace. “Don’t tell me we’re here to steal something, too.”

“Obviously.” Golden light swept over him, and he suddenly wore a familiar face.

“Why do you look like Steve?” Well, not exactly like Steve. More like if Steve got super into medieval LARPing.

“I have garnered a certain… reputation. I will need a disguise to commune freely, and you seemed rather fond of this one.”

“I’m also fond of little black dresses and French fries. Doesn’t mean I want to see you wearing them.”

“Your Steve Rogers has a trustworthy face, which I require. Now come.” He held out his hand.

“Why do you need to hold my hand this time?”

“Because it’s very crowded, and if I lose you, you’ll likely be sold to the highest bidder as a fascinating oddity.”

You didn’t want to touch him any more than you already had, but you also didn’t want to become some alien douchebag’s trophy human. Reluctantly, you placed your hand in his and allowed him to pull you towards the alley entrance. To his credit, he didn’t try anything weird like lacing your fingers together, and your hands were already so cold his skin almost felt warm. 

“You will want to conceal that if you don’t wish it stolen.” He shot a glance at the gun in your free hand. With a half-hearted grumble you shoved it in the back of your pants like those gangsters on TV and tugged your shirt down to cover it. 

He wasn’t wrong about the crowds. Figures of all shapes, sizes, and color schemes roamed the streets, bartering loudly with people running booths selling all manner of products. Being sold off felt more likely by the minute, and your hand tightened around Loki’s of its own accord. Instead of looking back at you with a smugly raised eyebrow, as you expected, he simply returned the pressure, squeezing reassuringly.

Maybe you should have reconsidered the laced fingers, though, because the moment you were soundly bumped your hand was wrenched out of his. You couldn’t even see Steve-Loki anymore, given the creature that hit you was roughly the size of an industrial refrigerator. “Uh, sorry, excuse me.” 

Only after you stuttered out your apology did you realize it probably didn’t speak any language you knew. Which left you gaping in surprise when its gravely voice said quite clearly, “Eh, what manner of thing are you?“

“Um…”

“Pardon me, sorry, this one is mine. Come along, darling.” Man, it was weird to watch Steve speak with a British accent. Still, his arm around your shoulders was a relief regardless of who was driving. Turns out the threat you know really is better than the one you don’t.

“What is it? Looks almost Terran.” The guy wasn’t moving, and his width made it difficult to pass. 

“I’m not sure. I haven’t gotten her tested.” Okay, so a little insulting, but still better. 

“How many stomachs does it have?” The man’s eyelids drooped so low he looked on the verge of falling asleep, and his lips puffed out like he’d overdosed on Novocain. You half expected to see drool any minute.

“Once again, I haven’t checked. If you’ll excuse us-”

“It’s damaged.” His thick, blue-gray fingers were suddenly prodding at your bandaged arm. You would have flinched well back if Loki’s arm hadn’t been around you. 

“Unfortunate accident.” His tone had tightened, as did his hold. 

“How much you want for it? My men haven’t had a treat in a while.”

“Not for sale, my apologies.”

“Five hundred units, whatdaya say?”

“I still say not for sale.”

“Eight hundred. That’s generous for damaged goods.”

“No, thank you.”

“Fifteen-hundred, final offer.”

“Good, then we can be going. Have a pleasant afternoon.”

There was finally a large enough break in the crowd for you to skirt around the stubborn stranger. You waited for a hand to grab either or both of you, but you appeared to have successfully escaped. “I didn’t think he was going to let us go.”

“He’d probably still be pressing the issue if he wasn’t currently following our duplicates in the opposite direction.”

You glanced over your shoulder to see the massive figure disappearing into the crowd. “Handy trick, that.”

“It has served me well.”

You turned back around, now hyperaware of everyone who so much as glanced your way. “I didn’t realize English was some kind of intergalactically known language.”

“It isn’t.”

“But that guy-”

“Was speaking the most common trade language of this sector. You were only able to understand him because I was translating for you. I assumed not knowing what he said would be more frightening.”

“Translating, like, in my head?” Your back straightened, and you knew he felt your shoulders ratchet tight. “Are you in my head right now?”

“Only the area that processes language. No need to panic.”

“Everything right now is a cause for panic.”

“If there’s one thing to be assured of, it’s that I will not allow harm to befall you. I am incapable.”

Incapable of taking you home, incapable of letting anything bad happen to you. Silver linings. Either way, you decided to stay under the shelter of his arm. He may be an extremely dangerous man, but at least he was directing the danger away from you for the time being.

“Was it at least a good price?”


	4. What now?

The building he led you to was smaller but obviously well cared for. Simple but lovely patterns were carved into each column in the colonnade, and walking through the arched doorway felt like going somewhere important. A familiar smell hit you, and you stopped completely.

“Books? Is this a library? Please tell me we’re not robbing a library now.” You took a step towards one of the shelves full of glittering book spines, only to be tugged back by Loki’s hand on your collar.

“Don’t wander off.”

You glared at his back but followed as he walked towards a large desk. Behind it a wiry orange woman scanned books, her head tilted up slightly to keep a pair of small spectacles with a beaded chain balanced on her nose. She raised her eyes at Loki as he stepped up, flat expression never shifting. “Can I help you?”

Loki was turned enough for you to see his wide smile. “I require a few texts from Asgard. Would you kindly put in a request?”

“Requests from Asgard take a lot of energy. Why do you need them?”

His expression somehow changed though his smile didn’t so much as twitch. Maybe it was the way his eyes flashed. “I’m sorry, but may I ask what this fetching piece of apparel is?”

Her spine straightened as his finger neared her face, eyes wide over the glasses he indicated. “Oh, a patron picked them up for me on his last junking trip. They are favored by librarians of Terra. He said they call them gloss-says.”

“I see. What purpose do they serve, aside from enhancing the features?”

“Oh my, well…” Was she blushing? Purple? “I believe Terrans require them to read their books, though I’m not sure how. All they do is make the words terribly blurry. They are such strange people.”

“Indeed they are. I must say, I find it admirable that you are willing to explore such a primitive culture through first-hand experience.”

Jiminy Cricket, this was legitimately painful. Deciding that this situation was more threatening than the dim stacks, you allowed your feet to lead you away, despite Loki’s warning. Soon tall shelves enveloped you on either side, filled with enticing books titled with script you couldn’t understand. You selected one at random and opened it to beautifully illuminated pages covered in elaborate text and vibrant designs. You couldn’t read it, of course, but you could imagine it described some epic legend.

“What did I tell you about touching unfamiliar things? And going off on your own?”

“That I shouldn’t do either under implied risk of disaster, death, and dismemberment.” You didn’t bother to look up. 

“So you do hear. You simply do not listen.”

“Pretty sure that was written on every report card I ever got. What’s this say? Looks cool.”

He waved a hand over the book and the words morphed into recognizable English. You scanned for only a few moments before recoiling, nose wrinkled.

“It’s talking about the best way to slaughter what sounds an awful lot like a space cow.”

“Very good.”

“Why would someone bother making something so gross look so beautiful?”

“Perhaps the design is a reflection of the author’s view on the subject matter. Passion can make even the ugliest of processes beautiful.”

You looked up to meet his borrowed eyes, saw something far away there. “Passion isn’t an excuse for bad behavior.”

“You have a moral objection to meat processing?”

“That’s not what I was talking about.”

He held you gaze for a few long seconds, then lifted the book from your hands and replaced it on the shelf. “Come, we need not linger here any longer.”

“Are we fleeing, or did you manage to flirt your way out of suspicion?”

“Do my methods disturb you?”

“ _I’d_ flirt with her if it got us the books you need. It’s just weird you had to appropriate Steve’s face to do it.”

His lips pressed thin in a remarkably Loki-like expression. Then he rolled Steve’s eyes and strode toward the door, the obvious expectation that you would follow.

Dusk had snuck up while you were inside, and the raucous streets had turned down to a few occupents here and there packing up or heading to somewhere else. “So what now?”

“The request will take a few days to process. In the meantime, we’ll need to secure lodging. But first, perhaps dinner? I’m sure we could find a place that serves your space cow.”

“Did you say days? Plural?”

“Yes. Passing the time shouldn’t be too difficult. As I recall, you enjoy sightseeing.”

“Excuse me?” 

“Well, one of me recalls. We can always return to the library if that would better suit you.”

“What difference does it make what would suit me?”

“Circumstances as they are, I see no reason why we shouldn’t enjoy ourselves.”

“Hey,” you pulled to a stop in the shadow of a building at the edge of a deserted square. “Would you mind looking like you again?”

He angled towards you, eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I already told you the Steve-face is weird. Besides, who’s going to recognize you in the dark?” You put your hands on your hips when he just continued to watch you from Steve’s face. “I mean, I get that he’s real pretty and all, but I didn’t think you were so insecure-”

A flash of gold and there stood Loki, looking very put upon. “Better?”

Your face remained completely impassive as you pulled your gun from behind your back and blasted him square on the chest. He hit the wall behind him, tunic smoldering but still in one piece besides the black singe mark. He stared at you with furrowed brow, fingers digging into the bricks for purchase to keep him upright. “What was that for?”

“We are not on an interstellar vacation. You can’t make everything better by employing knowledge about me that somebody else learned. This is not a feel-good movie where I heal you with the power of friendship. Do not mistake my tolerance, sympathy, and sense of self preservation as absolution or acceptance. The only reason I am going along with any of this is I need you to get home, just like the only reason you haven’t killed me is because other reality Loki gave you all the feels so you couldn’t. But I am not going to forget for a single second what a garbage person you are. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.” His unaffected façade might fool anyone else, but according to those memories, he’d never been good at pulling one over on you. You’d struck a nerve, an angry, exposed one, and you knew he had to be hating those murder-prevention feels all the more. But given his current state, he could only accept your abuse with as much dignity as possible. “Are you quite finished then?”

“Probably not, but that’ll do for now.”

He made a rather displeased face, but you’d said your piece and so lowered your gun to your side. However, when he made to stand away from the wall, he stopped short. You followed his gaze to see he’d somehow gotten his hand stuck under some sort of creeping vine. He tugged harder, but it refused to give. He turned to find his other hand in a similar situation, and that’s when you saw the vine wasn’t dormant at all, but actively growing up around him.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, hold still.” You leveled your gun again only to be met with a most wary look.

“I’m not sure I trust you to aim that at me anymore.”

“Please, who told you to trust me to begin with?” You lifted your pinky and ring finger away and straightened your pointer to run along the barrel.

“Drop it.”

You whirled towards the new voice, fingers immediately moving back to the handgrip. “Why don’t you… uh…”

Maybe this was actually all one big fever dream. Maybe you were in a coma. Maybe you were dying, and instead of your life flashing before your eyes your mind was cobbling together any bits of memory it could access. Because there was a raccoon aiming an oversized rifle at you. And your life couldn’t possibly be that weird.

“Why is there a raccoon pointing a gun at me?”

“Presumably because you are pointing one at it.”

“I said drop it.”

“The raccoon just talked. Are you translating rodent now?”

“He is speaking a language broadly shared between galaxies.”

“Talking raccoon. RIP my normal life.”

“I was under the impression your life hasn’t been normal for quite some time.”

“Touché.”

“Stop your yappin’ and put the gun down. Then… kick it over here.” Said talking raccoon was eyeballing your gun with naked desire that bordered on obscene. Which you actually found quite relatable. Huh… maybe you’d found your literal spirit animal. 

A hulking shadow rose up behind him and stepped into a shaft of moonlight. It appeared to be a tree… person… thing. Then you noticed branches extending from his arm along the wall all the way to Loki.

“How about this? I’ll put my gun down when Fangorn keeps his roots to himself.”

“No can do. Pretty boy there has a 30,000 unit bounty on him we aim to collect.”

“Hey, you told me 1,500 was a good price!” You glared at Loki in accusation even as you kept your weapon trained on the other two. 

“For a Midgardian. Need I remind you I am a god?”

“I don’t care if you’re Galactus.” Your whiskered assailant didn’t so much like being ignored. “You make a mean meal ticket either way.”

“I think this has gone on for long enough.” Loki tensed as if he might do something, but then one of the still creeping vines slapped over his mouth. He struggled, but now he seemed to be trussed up good and tight.

“Well done,” you muttered before turning back to the heavily-armed raccoon. “Look, it’s too bad about your bounty, but you can’t have him. Sorry.”

“What do you care? You just shot him a minute ago.”

“On the lowest setting which will hardly even leave a mark, and anyway that’s between us and complicated and none of your business. The point is I’m not done with him yet, so you’re going to have to find another meal ticket.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so? In that case…” He lowered his gun, but before you could register he threw something on the ground by your feet. A kind of _wvrb_ noise sounded with a blue flash, and then your entire body was yanked to the ground with extreme force. Your shoulder took the brunt of the impact, lighting up all the pain receptors there, but when you tried to push back up you couldn’t. You felt weighed down like gravity had increased exponentially.

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, the sack! Where else are we gonna put him?”

You could hardly breathe against the pull on your chest cavity, and moving even your fingers was a herculean task. The raccoon appeared over you, tiny paw reaching for your gun. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” you said around clenched jaw. 

“Of course _you_ wouldn’t.” But then he paused. “Why not?”

So what if you didn’t have the self-detonation in yet? He didn’t know that. You arched a meaningful eyebrow and watched him deliberate. 

He shrugged his narrow, furry shoulders. “Eh, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Ask and you shall receive, you thieving rodent. 

You pressed your fingers down, and the gun let out a burst of energy. The downside to this feature was its indiscriminate nature. Not only did it knock the raccoon and tree man back, but you as well. You skidded across the cobbled pavement, bits of rock and debris tearing at you skin. 

“Ouch, sonuva-”

At least the oppressive weight was gone. You stumbled to your feet and shot a quick glance at Loki. The pulse hardly affected him, bound to the wall as he was, though his eyes were wide above his ligneous gag. You heard a crackle of energy and ducked automatically. A laser beam blew a hole in the wall right where your head had been. You trained your gun on the raccoon who was now apparently actively shooting at you. “You trying to hurt somebody?”

“Yeah, I thought that was pretty obvious.”

Okay, fair point.

“Buddy, I have had a very difficult day, and I’m not about to end it by having a standoff with a furry woodland creature, so just back off!”

“Wow, someone’s in a mood.”

“You have no idea.”

An EMP shot from your gun left his rifle sparking to the point he had to drop it. The next blast hit him in the gut and sent him into the wall at Loki’s feet. You turned your attention (read: aim) to the tree who was looking down at his friend in concern. “Your move, redwood.”

“I am Groot.”

“Uh, okay, your move… Groot.”

The creature took another look at the slumped raccoon and slowly the vines covering Loki began to recede. As soon as he was free, Loki was by your side, scrutinizing the razed skin on your arm. “You are injured.”

“It’s just a little road rash. Don’t make a thing of it.”

His lips pinched and he took a notable step back. “My apologies.”

How exactly was a war criminal making you feel guilty right now? 

“Alright, how much for the gun?” The raccoon used the wall to push himself to his feet, one arm wrapped around his middle. 

“Not for sale.”

“Aw, come on! Seriously, how much?”

“What do you want it for anyway? I can’t imagine you’re lacking in the explosive toys department.”

“Ain’t got nothing like that. She’s a beaut.”

“While I appreciate the recognition, this is tailored exclusively for me. Without the precise finger placements you’re more likely to blow yourself up than anyone else.”

“Wait, that’s the secret? Oh, man, that’s genius!”

“I don’t… what?”

“Come on, we’ll buy you a drink and you can tell me how you differentiate the settings without overheating the whole thing. We’ll even stop trying to put your friend over there in a sack.”

The one designated Groot held up said sack helpfully. 

“That’s… a very nice offer, I think, but weren’t you just trying to kill me, like, two seconds ago?”

“Nah, that wouldn’t’a killed you. Probably.”

“Great. Anyway, thanks for the offer, but as I said I’ve had a day and I am so tired, so really-”

“Rocket, that you?”

“Oh, what now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: just found a typo where you pulled your bun out and shot him. Which is arguably more interesting.


	5. Easy peasy.

“Crap, not this guy,” the raccoon muttered, before lifting a paw to greet the approaching figure. “Hey… you… how’s life treatin’ ya?”

“By golly, it is you, you son of a gun!” The man was actually a color more familiar to you, though he did have navy designs around his eyes that were either natural, tattoos, or the result of way too much time spent in front of a mirror with an eyeliner pencil. He also appeared to have two additional arms, one pair crossed over his chest and the other planting hands on his hips. “I didn’t know you was hangin’ round these parts. What brings you to this humble corner of the galaxy?”

“Oh, you know, just looking for work. Actually, we happened to run into some old friends and we were on our way to go catch up…”

Wait, was he talking about you? Were you becoming a social excuse for a raccoon (apparently named Rocket)? The other man didn’t seem _that_ intolerable, if a little country, which was strange considering you’d never thought of other planets having a ‘country.’ That was probably ethnocentric. Earthnocentric? You cleared your throat to smother a giggle, which made Loki look at you sideways, but no one else seemed to notice. 

“Speakin’a work, I just heard about a new bounty you might be interested in.”

“We really-”

“Seems there’s a lab what done lost one’a their critters,” the man barreled on, moving the hands at his hips to shove thumbs in the waistband of his trousers, unaware of Rocket’s attempt to extricate himself. “They’s offerin’ 50,000 units to whoever brings the little guy back in.”

“What? You were only worth 30!” you whispered at Loki, who didn’t look away from the unfolding conversation to acknowledge your amusement. 

“Hush.”

“You’re worth less than an escaped lab rat!”

“That’s some nice haul.” Rocket seemed suddenly uneasy. “Hit us up if you get any leads, and we’ll split it.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Thing is, we’s already got a lead, ‘cause that description? Sounded awful fierce like somebody we knew. How’d you like to take a trip, friend?”

Oh. Rocket was the lab rat. Everything suddenly felt much more serious. 

“Not interested.”

“Well, now that’s a right shame.” He reached under his long coat and pulled out a large handgun. “Because this invite ain’t optional.”

The blast was surprisingly loud considering it was a laser beam. You saw Groot bend over to shield Rocket with his spreading arms right before Loki grabbed hold of you and turned so he was directly in the line of fire. 

“What the heck? Is this whole place filled with bounty hunters?”

“Perhaps there is a convention.”

Rocket threw something small towards the stranger, who shot it midflight, causing a mild explosion that stirred your hair and made the air taste metalic. The man grinned. “Now, now, Rocket, no need fer that. I just wanna take you home to yer family.”

“That place is not my home and those people are not my family.” You could see Rocket’s fur bristling. Whatever this lab was, apparently he wasn’t so keen to go back.

“Don’t be like that. They miss ya somethin’ fierce. Be a good little pet and heel!” The next blast shook the ground and must have pushed Groot to his limit. With a shout he shot his arm forward, only to have it blown to bits. The sight was almost grotesque, even if it was just splinters hitting the ground. Groot made a sound like a whimper, either in pain or frustration, and then you found your limit, too.

“Hey, why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?” The challenge was a bit confusing, considering he had both height and breadth on you. Unless you were suggesting he fight Loki, whose hands you dodged around to yell at this man, and even that comparison wasn’t quite even.

“This don’t concern you, little lady. Take yer husband and git outta here.”

“First of all, how dare you. Second of all…” you attempted to wrack your brain and came up empty. “Okay, I don’t have a second of all. Except this.”

You watched him double over as your shot hit him in the gut, your surprise strong enough to be a little distracting. That really should have knocked him back further. Maybe you’d misestimated his density.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Loki hissed behind you.

“He was asking for it!”

“Watch out!”

You raised your gun’s shield just in time, but the force threw you back into Loki and both of you to the ground several yards away.

“You know, there’s a reason I don’t do a lot of field work.”

“Boit! What is takin’ so long?” Through the settling dust you could just make out a woman who might be pink, or you might be mildly concussed. “How hard is it to grab one little critter?”

“Sorry, Elmae, he don’t wanna come quietly.”

“So pick hi-em up! You’re bigger’n he is, ain’tcha?”

“Well, he ain’t exactly by hisself, is he?”

“You are the most worthless man. I gotta do ever’thing. You best be closin’ yer eyes.”

You sat up in time to see this new woman chuck something towards Groot, who had scooped up Rocket in his remaining arm and was running in your general direction (that is, away). Then Loki grabbed you again and actual pulled you on top of him, covering your head with his arm.

The next thing you knew someone was shaking your shoulders. It was probably Loki, because you could hear him saying, “Wake up! I know for a fact you aren’t dead.”

“Ow, my head hurts,” you muttered into whatever you were lying on. You were pretty sure it was him, and you should probably care more about that.

“Of course it does. You just survived a concussive blast. You are welcome, by the way. Now get up so we may cease lying in the street like common vagabonds.”

“I’m not common.” You planted a hand on the ground and the other by your face on what was assuredly his chest and hoisted yourself up. When you managed to get your eyes open you found him staring up at you without discernable expression, hands still on your shoulders in case you tried to face plant back into him. “What happened? Where is everyone?”

“I assume the man and his compatriot made off with their quarry after the woman succeeded in knocking us all unconscious. A less likely though still possible scenario is the tree retained consciousness and they are all running amuck elsewhere.”

“Seems a little quiet for that.” With a solid push you got up to your knees, and he shortly followed to sit, surreptitiously watching your balance like you wouldn’t notice. You did notice, but elected to ignore his concern. “We have to go save them!”

You made to stand, but a hand on your wrist pulled you solidly back down. “We most certainly do not.”

At that point you realized you were still straddling one of his legs, but neither of you stopped to address it. “Yes we do! It’s partly my fault they got captured. I took out his gun.”

“You mean the one he was using to shoot at you? Need I remind you they were attempting to kidnap me at the time?”

“You heard what that man said about the lab. Rocket looked terrified just hearing about it.”

“Oh, now you’re on a first name basis with the kidnappers? How pleasant.”

“I wasn’t going to let them take you, and you’re hurting me.”

His eyes slid to his hand gripping your wrist too tightly, and he gently unlocked his fingers. You stood and stepped away as he followed. When he spoke again, he sounded like he was trying to appeal to your reason. “Just because the creature complimented your weaponry doesn’t mean you are obligated to rescue him.”

“It’s not about obligation. It’s about being on the right side of this. Besides, it’s not like it’ll be that hard. With the Tesseract we can hop in and out, easy peasy. No one will be the wiser.”

“We cannot risk using the Tesseract any more for the time being. Heimdell is sure to notice such a spike in energy.”

“So we’ll come up with a different plan!”

“How do you propose we begin this ill-conceived rescue mission anyway? You don’t know where they went.”

“It’s two space hicks making off with a talking raccoon and a tree, you’re a god, and I’m clever. We’ll figure something out.”

“I thought you were tired.”

“I am! I am completely exhausted from the tip top of my head to my little toesies. I’ve been kidnapped and attacked by giants and almost sold on the open market and had to save your bacon from becoming bounty. And it’s only been a _day_. But as it turns out, I’ve got one good deed left in me, so I’m gonna need you to get on my level. Come on, do it for justice. Do it for the likes. Do it for the ability to outwit a couple of yokels. Do it because I’ll be, like, twenty percent less mean to you.”

“Are you aware you have the tendency to ramble?”

“This is something I know, yes.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled long and slow through his nose, and you knew you had him. You were already smiling when he looked at you again. “Fine. If the rodent and his pet houseplant are really that important to you, we shall go fetch them.”

“That’s the spirit!” you cheered, but then noticed that your Loki senses were tingling. You contemplated him through narrowed eyes. “You actually have an idea which way they went, don’t you?”

He hesitated, eyes evasive. “Possibly.”

“Ah ha! All right, then, lead on. Easy peasy.”


	6. I had no idea that was going to work.

It was not easy peasy. The two space hicks were apparently part of a larger organization whose other members were much beefier and less good ol’ boy. Their massive spaceship was parked on the outskirts of town, and too many people milled about for any hope of sneaking aboard undetected. You and Loki peeked around the edge of a building to watch the comings and goings, which were surprisingly well coordinated for a group of bounty hunters.

“Where is this new plan you swore to come up with?”

“I’m working in it.” You drummed the fingers of one hand against a wall, the other fidgeted with your gun, which Loki eyed uneasily. “Can you pull that invisible man stunt?”

“Vessels of that class are equipped with sensors to detect cloaking.”

“So we’re looking at hiding in plain sight. All right, then make me look like that Clampett chick.”

“What?”

“That woman from earlier with the flash-bang. Remember? I think she was pink. I’ll sneak in as her, get Rocket and Groot, sneak back out. Easy-”

“Do not complete that rhyme.” He made no flourish this time, but you felt something like static sweep over you and make the hair on your arms stand up. You could sense Loki’s frown even as you inspected your disguise. She was, in fact, pink, with frizzy hair in two knots on top of her head and lacey, navy patterns surrounding her bared navel. Unusual, but you could work with it. Loki finally grew tired of your inattention. “And while you are doing this, you expect I shall, what? Calmly await your return?”

“Sounds good.”

“Absolutely not.” Gold light swept him, and he morphed into the man from earlier with the fancy eyes and the extra arms. “I shall accompany you.”

“Okay, yeah, sure, one thing though: let me hear your deep south.”

“Pardon?”

“The dialect! The ain’t’s and the y’all’s and the lil doggies. Come on, Cambridge, give me your best hillbilly impression.”

He stared out at you from the stranger’s face, and then spoke stiltedly. “Where did you… stash… them prisoners… that we… brought, this is ridiculous.”

“You’re telling me. Look man, you’re not cut out for this one. You are neither a little bit country nor a little bit rock and roll, and we don’t have time to get you fluent in backwoods. Stay here, be back up, come rushing in when you hear explosions.”

“It concerns me that you said ‘when.’”

“Come on, what’s your hang up? Didn’t you once refer to me as adept?”

He paused, chewed his words. “I… cannot… abide … the idea of you going in there alone.”

“ _You_ can’t, or other timeline you can’t?”

That got his attention. His hands clenched and he looked away, jaw tight.

When he didn’t seem to have an answer, you continued, “The best way to deal with these memories is not to let them get to you. You know that in your heart of hearts you couldn’t care less if I go rushing headlong into danger. So sack up, ‘cause I got things to do. I got a hoedown to git to ‘fore I feed the hogs.”

He closed Boit’s eyes and let out a long sigh through his nose. “No. I won’t allow it.”

“Ooh, sorry, the answer we were looking for was, ‘I am completely in support of this plan – good luck!’ And for your consolation prize…”

He really should have picked up on your quick draw by now. He flinched on reflex when you shot at his feet, only to grab the wall for balance when they didn’t flinch with him. “What did you do?”

“The full explanation involves van der Waals forces, but that gets technical, so let’s just say I exponentially increased the friction between the soles of your boots and the ground. Don’t worry – it’s not permanent. I’ll reverse it as soon as I get back. Just hang tight.”

“No, do not-”

Blah, blah, blah, machismo overprotection. He could read you the riot act after you rescued Rocket and Groot. You strode towards the ship, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling of his eyes burning into your back. A few of the other crew members nodded as you passed, but only one outright hailed you. “Hey, Elmae!”

Right, Elmae, that was her/your name. “What’s up, sugar?”

“Boit was looking for you.” This guy’s shoulders were almost as wide as you were tall, but his voice had a soft, well-mannered quality.

“Course he was. That man can’t zip his fly without me.” You put your hands on your hips and smirked as he let out a small chuckle. “Don’t s’pose he got the new cargo settled like he said he was gonna?”

Now his mirth dropped into concern. “He… he said you were handling it.”

“That no good… he’s tryin’a skip out on the paperwork! Oh, we are gonna have words. He say where he was goin’?”

“He was trying to find you, so maybe Quadrant Three?”

“Thanks, hon, you’re the best. Maybe you oughta give Boit some lessons.” You sent him a wink and headed for the ship, only to be stopped by him a second time. You swallowed down your anxiety and turned back with what you hoped was an interested smile.

“What did you think of the book?”

Oh crap. “It… it was really somethin’, I’ll tell ya. Real interestin’. And that ending, woo!”

“You didn’t read it, did you?” He didn’t appear suspicious or accusatory, only amused and maybe a little disappointed.

You let your shoulders drop. “You got me. Sorry, sug. With everythin’ goin’ on, I plum forgot.”

“It’s all right. You can keep it a little longer. We’ve got a few jumps to make, so maybe you’ll have time during the flight. Let me know.”

“Sure thing. You really are the sweetest.” It was kind of true, which was really sad. You wondered about his relationship with the real Elmae and her relationship with Boit. Was this a love triangle or was the guy just jonesing for some intellectual conversation? And if the latter, why go to Elmae? Maybe her dropped g’s concealed astonishing intellect, though he hadn’t seemed surprised at her not reading the book.

Why were you thinking about this? You had a rodent and a houseplant to save.

Upon entering the ship, you realized you hadn’t exactly thought this through. Sure, book man had said Boit was headed to Quadrant Three to find Elmae where she was supposedly stowing Rocket and Groot, but you hadn’t factored in that you had no way of finding out where Quadrant Three was without giving away that you were completely unfamiliar with the ship.

So you wandered, looking confident but feeling like a waste of time. Then you found a computer.

Probably. 

It looked like a computer. You pressed a button experimentally, and a screen lit up. Ah, sweet technology. This you could handle.

Probably.

And for the most part you did. At one point you may have erased someone’s vacation photos, but eventually you managed to pull up some kind of infrared map of the whole ship. Off to one side and down were two heat signatures that differed from the rest – one small and one large. After a few long minutes wasted on determining your own position, you set off for Quadrant Three.

Probably.

“Ow, watch it!”

“Hold still, and it won’t hurt so much.”

“It’s not s’posed ta hurt at all, if your blasted absorption vest has worked like you said it would.”

You pressed your back to the nearest wall at the sound of the familiar country twang. You peered around a door frame to see a man in a facsimile of a lab coat wrestling some sort of vest off a grimacing Boit.

“My vest works just fine when deployed properly. You should never have tested it against a weapon of this magnitude.”

“What mag-ni-tood? All she had was a little blaster. You sayin’ that’s all it takes to overpower this sucker?”

That caused the scientist (?) pause. “Impossible. No blaster on the market could cause this type of damage.”

You could feel yourself smirking and couldn’t stop. Primitive civilization indeed. Even aliens were impressed with your designs. You couldn’t wait to tell… 

Who? Tony? Phil? Clint? People currently inaccessible to you, possibly galaxies away? 

…Loki? 

Glee eradicated, you slunk past the door unnoticed and continued on your way.

They really needed to 5S this place, starting with some signage. You wouldn’t have known when you reached Quadrant Three except for the large tree man slumped against the translucent side of the cylinder containing him. After a quick survey of the land revealed no unconfined persons, you jogged over and rapped on the glass. Groot paused his attempts to gnaw on a leaf growing from his own regenerating shoulder to turn sleepy eyes to you.

“Hey, it’s me…” Shoot, he didn’t know your name. “Gun girl! You tried to kidnap my… person, remember? I’m just borrowing this face.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah you are, bud. I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?”

He grunted as his eyes slipped closed. Had they drugged him or something? No matter. You’d said you were getting him out, so you just had to figure out how. Control panel, control panel… oh, look, Rocket! He was floating nearby, suspended in a yellow orb and probably unconscious. At least now you’d found them both.

You first attempted to short out Groot’s containment unit with an EMP blast, but it had no visible effect. Then you tried straight up shooting it, aiming well over his head, but the shot was deflected and left a dark scorch mark on the nearby wall. You prepared to amp up the power, but never got a chance to test it. 

“Hey, what do you think yer doin’?”

Uh oh, Georgia peach was back. You turned and watched her eyes widen at the sight of her own face. “Ha, well, this is awkward.”

Her mouth opened as if to shout for reinforcements, but she didn’t get a sound out before you shot her in the face (just in case she was wearing one of those handy absorption vests… under her crop top). As she slumped to the ground, you thought regretfully that she probably knew how to let Groot and Rocket out. Alas, now she was unconscious. Perf.

“What’s all the racket in here?”

Oh, double perf. Boit stopped next to the fallen Elmae’s body, looking between the two of you like you’d stalled his brain. “Boit, baby, you would not believe it! I come in here to find someone who looked just like me, so I up and stunned her, and… uck, you know what? I can’t. Loki was right – this is ridiculous.”

You raised your gun, but unfortunately he seemed to have caught on pretty quickly. He ducked, then shot forward with the force of an angry bull. His shoulder dug into your ribs and winded you before you even hit the ground.

“Who’re you an’ why do you look like my girl?”

“I’m her conscience, and I finally got the better of her.” You managed to get one foot up and kick him off you. You rolled to the side and then to your feet, but before you could take aim he was already swinging a discarded sheet of metal at you. You ducked, but he got an arm across your throat on the upswing and pinned you to the wall. You might have tried shooting him point blank, despite the risk to your own well-being, but his hands clamped around both your wrists like shackles and held them at your sides. 

Those extra arms were really… handy. 

Luckily, his eyes were on your gun and not your face, which was most assuredly distorted with suppressed hilarity. “I know you! Yer that lady from before with the fancy blaster. Ya know our weapons guy didn’t believe me when I told him what a punch that little thing has.”

“Then he’s really not going to believe this.”

With the limited movement available, you twisted your hand to press the gun’s barrel to his bare skin and ran your finger down its length. A jolt loosened his grip, and even as your own skin smarted, you wrenched that arm free. He flinched away when it landed by his ear, but the shot you got off was far behind him. He grinned down at you, showing a surprisingly complete set of oddly bluish teeth. “Ha! What was you expectin’ that to do?”

“I don’t know, but it’s going to be interesting to find out.”

Eyes narrowed he looked over his shoulder just in time to see Rocket’s orb crash through one side of Groot’s tube and out the other, leaving perfect, matching holes. A hissing filled the room, and the tree man began to stir. Boit turned back with horror to find your grinning face. “Honestly, I had no idea that was going to work.”

“I…AM… GROOOOT!” His arms, one half the size of the other, rammed into the already damaged sides of his container, and it burst apart in a spray of glass. The fully formed arm shot towards you, wrapped around the still stunned Boit, and slammed him into every available surface for a good fifteen seconds. Then he dropped him like a sack of potatoes and shot you a smile full of wooden teeth. Space dentists must work a lot of overtime. 

“Nicely done, dude. You got Rocket?”

He held up his friend's prison wrapped in the vines of his baby arm. The orb didn’t look any closer to breaking, and Rocket was still very much unconscious. You picked your way through the broken glass to get a better look. Perturbed by its apparent indestructibility, you ran your hand over its smooth surface, searching for some kind of catch. Instead it lit up with a screen, and what you were pretty sure was a biometric lock.

“Huh, okay…” You put your hand to it, only to have it flash red. “Fine, be that way.”

You motioned for Groot to follow you to the still unconscious Elmae. Flopping her limp hand against the screen elicited a green light and a click. The orb disappeared, and Rocket collapsed against Groot’s arm, coughing. He blinked at you, still half out of it, and then at the girl on the floor and wheezed, “What in the…”

“Bounty hunter,” you pointed at her, and then at yourself, “…not.”

His eyes latched onto your gun, and you saw the comprehension dawn. “You come here just to save us?”

“Well, it was on the tour.” The other woman began to stir with a ‘wha?’ so you punched her unconscious again. “And I have terrible impulse control.”

“What are your feelings on interspecies dating?”

You smothered a laugh and stood. “Sorry, I don’t do long distance relationships, and some distance is exactly what you need right now.”

“Then how much for the gun?”


	7. No hard feelings, okay?

“You sure you don’t wanna come with us? Didn’t seem like you liked that other guy all that much.” Rocket glanced over at where you stood watching as he flipped the appropriate switches to start up a compact space craft. You couldn’t speak to how you’d managed to sneak a giant tree and a mouthy raccoon down to a bay full of smaller ships without being caught, but here you were on the cusp of bidding them farewell. Or not, if Rocket had his way. This was about the third time he’d brought up tagging along with them.

You smiled and resisted the urged to scratch his fuzzy little head. “Nah, I kinda promised I’d help him with something. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Well, if you change your mind…”

“I’ll be sure to look you guys up.”

Groot leaned over and held up a palm to show you a steadily growing flower. Then he plucked it and presented it with one last, “I am Groot.”

“Thanks, buddy, you too.” You twirled the delicate stem as you stepped back so they could close the hatch.

“Did I not call dibs? You trying to snake me or what?” Rocket muttered just before the door sealed and the engines fired. You watched the ship taxi out and disappear into the dark, and then stood for a while longer, wondering if you’d made the right decision. They could probably find a way to get you back to earth. Loki would probably wiggle free eventually. He could also probably sort himself out on his own sooner or later. Why exactly had you turned down Rocket’s offer?

You didn’t have time to think about this right now. You needed to find the best way off this barge. You could follow the ramp and hope something led outside. You could make your way back through the ship and try not to get caught. Or there was always option number three.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Sounded like a ship took off, but there’s nothing on the schedule.”

Uh oh. 

You ducked to crouch behind some equipment just as the voices began echoing inside the bay. “Are you sure? Maybe someone ran out to get last-minute supplies.”

“They still should have logged it. You know how the captain is.”

“Well, check the video and see what happened.”

Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.

Okay, stay calm.

“That’s Elmae! What’s she doing?”

“Did she help our mark escape?”

Crap, no time for calm. You had to sneak out before-

Nope, the two men had gone deathly silent. Which could only mean they’d seen you hide and were now headed your direction, presumably with weapons at the ready.

Welp, there’s nothing for it.

They may have been almost abnormally quiet, but you were well trained. The moment the first man appeared around the corner you swept his legs out from under him. He hit the ground flat on his stomach, and you immediately entangled your limbs with his in a pin that any wrestler would be proud of. As he was still coming to terms with that, you turned your gun on his companion. He collapsed to the ground unconscious, and finally the first began to struggle. “What’re you doing, Elmae?”

“Well, see, the little critter looked so pitiful I had to let hi-em go. Doncha think he looked pitiful?”

“What’s it matter? He was worth 50,000!”

“You know, I think the world would be a much better place if we weren’t all so eager to sell other people for a quick buck.”

He stilled in your hold, and you thought for a moment you might have actually made him reconsider all of his life choices. But then, “What?”

“Okay, time for you to go sleepy-bye, and when you wake up this will have all been a terrible dream.” A measured blow to one of his vagus nerves sent his eyes rolling up into his head. You slowly detached yourself from the second unconscious man, muscles sparking with renewed blood flow. Now you just had to get out of here without anyone else catching you.

Time for option three.

You hit the ground seconds after the large chunk of metal that used to be part of the ship. Unfortunately, your exit was not as quiet as you probably should have been aiming for, and as you stood up and dusted off your hands you heard, “Hold it right there.”

Oops.

“Hey, sugar, y’all will not believe what I just found-”

“Don’t bother. I know you’re not Elmae. Now put your hands where I can see them.”

Hands on your hips, you turned to see the book guy from earlier. “Just out of curiosity, how did you know? I thought my accent was pretty on point.”

“Elmae doesn’t call me cutesy nicknames. I said put your hands where I can see them!”

“Can you not see them? Look, I’ll level with you – my trigger finger is getting a little overworked, and you seem like a nice guy with a questionable occupation and an unfortunate crush. Maybe you shouldn’t be wasting your time giving books to someone you don’t actually expect to read them, especially when she already appears to have a boy… Boit, but that’s not really my business. The point is, can’t we both just agree there’s nothing to see here?”

He’d kind of winced at the mention of his crush, but then his expression became frustrated if not a little incredulous. “You are impersonating my crewmate and took out a chunk of my ship. You think that’s nothing to see?”

“Sorry, that was a bad choice of phrase. Obviously, there’s something to see. What I meant to say is let’s just ignore it and move on with our lives. Whadaya say?”

“…I can’t tell if you’re stalling or if you actually expect that to work.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

You shifted minutely, and instantly his grip on his rifle tightened. “You make a move, and I’ll drop you where you stand.”

Interestingly enough, he was the first person you believed could do it.

“Alright, dude, no sudden movements. I’m with ya.”

“Hold your arms straight out in front of you. Do it slowly.”

“Do what, the Macarena?” But you did Frankenstein your arms, because your sass factor did not outweigh your will to not get shot. You really didn’t want to deal with Loki’s righteous gloating. 

Your assailant’s gun remained leveled at your chest throughout his cautious approach. When he neared your outstretched hands, he reached into a pouch on his belt and removed something you couldn’t identify. Still, they weren’t hard to figure out after he slapped them around your wrists. The jerk was handcuffing you. 

Apparently thinking restraints somehow made you less of a threat, he finally allowed the muzzle of his rifle to waver as he reached around to slip the gun from the back of your pants. You twitched your arms a little to test their movement and said, “Hey, no hard feelings, okay?”

“What?” He paused, hand still lingering near your waist. Faster than he could anticipate, you wrapped the glowing connecting line between your cuffs around his arm and wrenched the appendage hard enough to make him double over. You twisted and jammed your heel into his solar plexus, which sent him to his knees and his gun to the dirt. With a flick of your foot, the large weapon was in your hands. You gave him one more apologetic look before you swung it into the side of his head.

“I have a feeling you’re not going to take me up on that ‘no hard feelings’ thing,” you muttered as you gazed down at his motionless, hulking mass. You dropped his gun to retrieve yours from where it had fallen. Cuffs removed (and wholly unusable, sorry again book man), you wasted a few precious moments shifting him to the recovery position. This was no easy task, to be sure, but you already felt bad enough for everything you’d put this seemingly genuine guy through. You didn’t need him up and dying on you, too. 

After all the hubbub, it was remarkably easy to skirt the ship and sneak away undetected in the dark. You rounded the far side of the building where you’d left Loki, walking the length of it to find him looking like himself and staring at the spaceship intently, leaning awkwardly where his feet wouldn’t move. 

“Hey-” You saw the dagger but didn’t bother to react as he shoved you against the wall and pointed it at your face. “Nice to see you, too. I’m fine, by the way.”

He eyed you suspiciously, and you felt the prickling static fade from your skin. Once he was satisfied as to your identity, the blade dissipated. “Do not do this again.”

“Which this specifically?”

His hand, still on your shoulder, fisted your shirt and pulled you to your toes. “You may be correct that this… concern I have for you is unnatural, but it is no less real for the moment. What if your ill-conceived plan had failed? What if you had been captured? You rendered me helpless, putting us both at great risk. No matter your opinion of me, you will never force this position on me again. Do _you_ understand?”

“Not to put a damper on your whole rant, but you could have just taken off your shoes.” 

The silence that followed was heavy as you watched your statement register. Some of the fire faded, but his features remained tight as he relinquished his grip. “Fix it.”

You rolled your shoulder deliberately and obliged. He picked up both feet in turn, probably feeling the same tingles you were. He was still looking at his feet when he spoke again. “You cannot go where I am unable to protect you.”

Your hand twitched at your side, gun dangling. “I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t need you to protect me.”

“ _I_ need it.” His expression was carefully controlled, but his eyes were bright when they met yours. “Compelled or not, it has become a necessity. You despise me, and rightfully so, but I never believed you to be cruel.”

You frowned. “I’m not sure you’re altogether right about that.” Now he frowned back at you. With a sigh, you broke eye contact and the moment, shoving your gun back in its designated gangster spot and resettling your shirt. “Whether I hate you or not, I didn’t leave you here intentionally to make you suffer. I did it because it was the best option we had.” 

“As determined by you.”

“Well, your plan would have gotten us caught, so yeah, as determined by me.”

“Do you ever consider that you may not be as infallible as you think?”

“Honestly, no. What good would that do me? If I thought what I was thinking was wrong, I wouldn’t think it, would I?”

He closed his eyes and inhaled very slowly. “You are the most frustrating of creatures.”

“Hey, I finally beat Tony out for something.” You didn’t flinch when he opened his eyes to glare at you. “Yes, be angry with me. That is a legitimate emotion, one that comes from you and not some alternate dimension, future version of you that is way too into me – a me that isn’t even me. Anything else, everything else, you have to ignore because _it’s not real_. Don’t let someone else’s emotions make your choices for you. Except the ones that keep you from murdering me. Let’s hang on to those.”

“You do not understand what this is like for me.” He rubbed his eyes like he could rub you out of his conscious. 

“Maybe not, but I know what I’m talking about. I’m a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Stuffing emotions is in the job description.” You didn’t like his sad face. It made your skin feel tight and itchy. Megalomaniacs shouldn’t be able to look pitiable. “Neither of us is happy with this situation, but we have to deal. It’ll all be over in a few days. We can make it through until then, can’t we?”

“I see no alternative.”

You thought of pointing out that he _could just take you home_ , but that seemed rude considering he felt so strongly that he couldn’t. Instead you said, “We should probably get out of here before they find all the bodies I left behind.”

“Bodies?” He was either worried or intrigued, and you weren’t entirely sure which would be worse. 

“Unconscious. I had to overcome a few obstacles along the way.”

“You were successful in your objective, then?”

“Rocket and Groot are headed offworld as we speak.”

“I didn’t see your escape.”

“I got impatient. Do you think they’ll be upset I cut a hole in their ship?”

And just like that the tension was gone. In fact, he was smirking with something dangerously close to pride. “I think you enjoy courting trouble.”

“Game recognize game.” You smiled, just a little, as his head twitched with confusion. “Never mind. Hey, remember when I said I was tired?”


	8. Stop talking.

“Mm, sweet alien bed, we are going to be very happy, you and I.”

“Your open affection is discomforting.”

“Never try to stand in the way of true love.” You watched him putter around from the flat of your back as the ridiculously soft alien mattress cradled you. He hadn’t been pleased with the room’s size, but at least he’d gotten two beds. 

“How is your arm?” He asked while looking at a small wash basin with disdain. 

You listlessly raised your arm to glance at the gauze wrapped around your bicep. “Good, I guess? I mean, you just bandaged it earlier today. Or yesterday. I have absolutely no concept of how much time has passed.”

“I was referring to the injury you incurred fighting that small rodent you then insisted on rescuing.”

“Oh!” You pulled up your other sleeve to inspect the road rash you’d mostly forgotten about. There were several angry looking scrapes, but even the worst had already scabbed over. “Looks fine.”

Something damp slapped onto your stomach and began soaking your shirt. You sat up with a sputtered protestation, but he’d moved on to being disappointed in the compact armoire next to the basin. “At least take the time to clean it.”

You stretched your sleeve over your shoulder and pinned it with your chin in order to have uninhibited access. “Anyone ever tell you you worry too much?”

“Yes.”

The simple word felt loaded somehow, enough to give you pause, but his eyes were still on the armoire. You considered prying but then decided you were better off not. You had a precarious balance to maintain, and playing Name That Trauma was sure to shift something. Instead you said, “Thank you.”

“I wouldn’t need to interfere if you’d simply take the initiative in your own care.”

“No, not-” You threw the now grimey cloth back at him, which he caught without turning his head and deposited in the bowl. “I meant for agreeing to help those guys. I know I didn’t give you much of a choice in the end, but you did take me to the ship, and I know even that couldn’t have been easy considering you have magical outside influences that makes you want to keep me from danger. Also, you’re not a very altruistic person in general.”

“Ooh,” his eyes narrowed, and his mouth scrunched up, “and we were so close to you finally having a kind word to say to me.”

“I said I was going to be twenty percent less mean, not more kind. But I really do appreciate it.”

“You are welcome but do try to keep the heroics to a minimum until we have this squared away.”

“I can’t make any promises, though there is a good chance I’m not leaving this bed until those books come in.” You let out a long, indulgent groan and flopped down on your side to bury your face in a pillow. “Tempur-Pedic can suck it.”

"I am delighted you approve.”

You heard a creak and opened one eye to scrutinize him where he sat on the opposite bed. “You know, it’s really hard to figure out when you’re being sarcastic anymore.”

“I find it hard to parse, myself." His attention drifted towards the ceiling in thought, fingertips pressed together and hanging between his knees. "I obviously care very little for your comfort, however I still feel a certain satisfaction I know is not my own. Discerning between the false and true memories is becoming increasingly more difficult.”

Okay, so now you were starting to feel a little guilty about what you did. A little. “Can we watch some more of them? The other memories, I mean.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of interesting, I guess. And maybe it’ll help me understand.”

A few moments passed in unbroken eye contact, and then he sighed. A flick of his fingers, and a little screen appeared. You were curled up on a couch in the apartment from the garbage planet. Loki sat at the other end, reading something in another language from a small, blue-and-gold book, his voice sounding muffled and far away to your present ears. You had your eyes closed, and when you stretched out your legs and your feet landed in his lap, neither in the scene reacted beyond Loki’s hand landing casually on your shin.

“What is that?”

“Poetry from Hnitbjörg. You asked me to read it in the native tongue.” Loki shifted to recline against the headboard.

“It sounds pretty. It’s not about slaughtering cows, is it?”

“No, not this time.”

Maybe this had been a bad idea. Whatever he was reading also sounded sad, lovelorn, and the whole thing just looked too… nice. Easy. You swallowed and sat up, eyes on your shoes as you loosened the laces. “What about something with a little more action?”

“You’re…?”

You looked up just in time to see Jane Foster slap Loki across the face while you smirked behind her. “Now we’re talking.”

“I thought you might like that one.” Loki crossed his arms as he settled in fully, but he didn’t look too upset. You wrestled your way under the blankets to watch the rest of the escape from Asgard with present Loki providing commentary for the why. You were strangely proud of other-timeline you for figuring out how to fly the spaceship so quickly. You were less impressed with how oblivious you were to the amount of time that Loki spent watching that you, like he was dissecting your every move and coming up with multiple strategies to incapacitate you. Even here, across timelines and space, you were uncomfortable with his scrutinizing stare.

Further down the line, Loki shoved Jane at you and almost got sucked into some alien black hole weapon. You yelled for Thor, who saved him in the nick of time, and then you and Loki fought off a pack of those Dark Elves. “That was actually pretty heroic of you, saving Jane at your own expense.”

“Thor would have lost focus if his love should have died.”

“Right, it was a completely pragmatic sacrifice.”

“Your sarcasm is far more easily identified.”

“Hmm.” You were engaged in some intense hand-to-hand with one of your combatants until you Spartan kicked him backwards and blasted him. Other you didn’t see the Elf approach from behind, but Loki grabbed him by the hair and ran his blade over his throat, quite brutally.

“Where did a weapons technician learn to fight so well?”

“I’m the only cadet to double major at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy – operations and science.” You were too busy watching him fake his death to care about present Loki watching you. “I thought I could make better weapons if I had in-depth experience for how they might be used.”

“No wonder Barton was so adamant that you be the one to make his equipment.”

You frowned, still staring at the screen as it shifted to the fight on the rainbow bridge in Asgard, but you could no longer focus on it. “I don’t want to talk about Clint with you.”

“I assumed you would appreciate hearing about his confidence in your abilities.”

“You assumed wrong.”

“Is it because he has been avoiding you? I agree that such action does seem disproportionate. It’s not as if he did any lasting harm.” He paused, and you could feel his stare, but you refused to look back or speak any more. “Unless, of course, he did something without my knowledge.”

You answered him with more silence.

He scoffed, and you could easily imagine his eyes rolling. “Whatever happened-”

“You don’t know jack about what happened. You were too busy getting yourself captured. So drop it.”

“You must realize that your estrangement is temporary. Agent Barton thinks quite highly of you-”

“Stop. Talking.” Your hand was gripping the blanket so tightly it trembled. “I don’t want to know what you dug out of his brain while you were squishing it around like Play-Doh. I don’t need the reminder of what you did to one of the most important people in my life, how you set him up like a loaded gun and walked away without bothering to engage the safety. You are quickly depleting the extremely limited amount of goodwill you managed to accumulate, so if you don’t want to wake up to me smothering you with a pillow you will stop talking.”

And miraculously he did. The scene continued to flicker in the darkness, showing him carrying your battered body to safety, but none of it truly registered. You rolled to face the wall and pulled the blanket up over your ear. “I’m going to sleep.”

Your announcement was met with silence and darkness, so you knew he’d turned off the memories. Between the absolute stillness of the room and the deafening pounding of your heart, you didn’t think you’d be falling asleep any time soon. But then you were hearing the door shut quietly and the darkness behind your eyelids was decidedly grayer. You blinked a few times to find the room flooded with light. Your side was stiff and sore, so you must have slept hard enough not to have moved at all. You dropped to your back with a grunt at the immediate tingling, and there was Loki, looking as if he’d been caught.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Wassat smell?”

He presented a roll or bun of some sort with steam drifting from a dip in the top. “I procured breakfast. I believe it’s similar to your planet’s dumplings.”

Well, you were pretty hungry. You sat up to accept it, shaking out your other hand to relieve the pins and needles. The food turned out to be palatable enough, and you were so engrossed that for a moment you didn’t notice Loki was still standing there awkwardly. “What?”

“I also… had this made.” He held out a pendant on a string which you hesitantly accepted. It was smooth and opaque and displayed a single, white flower that looked very familiar. You shot a glance over to the bedside table where you’d laid Groot’s present the previous night to find it gone. “I thought you might wish to preserve the memento of your heroic deeds.”

“You shouldn’t get people’s things shellacked without their permission.” Peripherally you could see his shoulders drop a fraction, and you allowed your fingers to curl around his admittedly very thoughtful gift. “Thank you.”

His spine straightened, and he nodded once. Then he didn’t seem to quite know what to do with himself. You took pity on him, looking him full in the face as you pulled your legs up to criss-cross your ankles. “So what’s on the docket for today?”


	9. Now we have a problem.

“Why did I think this was going to be more interesting?”

“Perhaps the excitement of your first day left you with unrealistic expectations.” 

You walked through the same market as the previous day, except this time at a much more leisurely pace. It was about midmorning, to your estimate, so it was a little less crowded as well. Noisy still, of course, and the air was permeated with the smell of cooked meat and spices so thickly you could taste it. All in all, it could have been any street fair in New York. If that fair happened to be close to a Sci-fi convention. 

“But I’m on an alien planet! It should at least feel cool and different. But everyone here seems just like the people on earth. It’s all so… normal.”

“Your horizons appear to have expanded.”

“I’m practically an after-school special.” You wandered over to a stall, mostly because it was the most colorful in sight. Swatches of vibrant fabrics in all shades and patterns swayed in the breeze. You gave into the urge to touch one, a kaleidoscope of purples and oranges, and it slipped over your fingers like liquid silk. “You know, I’m a little concerned about what alien worm excreted this material.”

“And yet you touch it anyway.”

“I sure do. That probably says a lot about me as a person.”

“You like?” A squat woman scuttled over, black eyes passing over you briefly before settling on Loki. “Fine material! You buy? Pretty dress for pretty pet!”

“Pet? What happened to wife?” You stared the woman down as she blinked like she didn’t expect you to possess the power of speech. Or maybe she just didn’t understand what you said – her knowledge of whatever language she was speaking sounded basic at best.

Loki was giving you the ol’ side-eye again. “You have openly balked every time anyone even insinuated such a thing.”

“Wife is still better than _pet_ , though I don’t know why everyone always assumes we have to be in some meaningful relationship. No one ever guesses abductee and emotional hostage.”

“How are you an emotional hostage?”

“I’m only the abductee – _you’re_ the emotional hostage. Like, someone held hostage by their emotions, not a hostage who cries a lot.”

“I see.”

“You buy?” The shopkeeper interrupted, now eyeing you both suspiciously. “Good quality. Very pretty. Good value.”

“Um, yes, I’m sure it is, but we’re just looking, thank you.”

The woman’s suspicion morphed into resentment, and she muttered something you couldn’t understand as she turned away. You looked up at Loki curiously. “Why wasn’t that translated? Is it a language you don’t know?”

“No, it simply did not bear translation. It was rather disparaging of both our mothers.”

“Ah. Maybe we should move on.”

You continued to amble from stall to stall, trying not to make eye contact with any of the owners lest you unduly encourage them. It’s not like you had any money to spend anyway, and you weren’t about to ask Loki for more than he volunteered. It was uncomfortable enough accepting the kabob he bought you for lunch, and you had plenty to worry about with its unidentifiable contents.

Not that you didn’t eat the whole thing. It tasted good, whatever it was.

“I just wish something interesting would happen,” you continued the conversation from earlier as if a couple hours hadn’t passed in between. You bit off the last hunk of vegetable(?) and tossed the stick in what appeared to be a waste receptacle, letting out an overly dramatic sigh. “I can’t go back to earth without a bunch of crazy stories.”

“All right – listen up!” A woman clothed in an entire cow’s worth of leather stomped up on a nearby display table, to the protestations of its owner until a man shoved a large gun in his face. More armed men and women appeared at either end of the market and all the alleyways. Loki unobtrusively shepherded you back a few steps into the shadows between two stalls. “Last night someone broke into my ship and stole something from me. I’m here to let everyone know that I don’t take theft lying down. I will find you, and you will pay for what you took from me, either in units or in flesh. I’m not picky.”

“You were saying?” Loki’s words were flippant, but his ramrod posture spoke volumes.

“Now my men are going to start their sweep of the town. Everything will go much smoother if everyone cooperates. Got it?”

“Okay, so this isn’t really a problem,” you muttered, watching the woman leap down from the table. “I mean, it is, but it isn’t. Boit and Elmae only saw us for, like, two seconds in the dark, and the rest of the time I was incognito, so they probably won’t recognize us, especially since you’re wearing Steve right now.”

“Won’t recognize _you_. This was your rescue mission. I had nothing to do with it, as per your decision.”

“Nothing except providing the disguise and being generally accomplice-y.”

“I would probably be rewarded handsomely for turning you over.”

“It’s really unhelpful to make threats we both know are meaningless.”

“Did you not recently tell me I shouldn’t allow the memories from the other timeline to interfere with my decisions here?”

“You’re gonna start listening to me _now?_ ”

The bounty hunters were herding people into the streets, using the barrels of their guns on those who hesitated. A few crew members began pointing small devices resembling scientific calculators at each person until they beeped and the operators yelled clear.

“Tell me, did anyone realize you were an imposter?”

“Uh… maybe. Why?”

“My best guess is that contraption can detect any altered appearances. It would seem they’ve caught on to my trick.” He allowed his illusion of Steve to fade. 

“So no costume changes. That’s fine. They still won’t know we’re us. Not a problem.”

One particular victim caused the device to make a much angrier sound, and one of the bounty hunters instigated a rather thorough pat down until he pulled out a gun. He presented it to the device operator, Boit of all people, who shook his head. 

“Okay, now we have a problem.” You looked at Loki, eyes wide with panic. “I’ve got my gun on me. My unique, very specific gun that multiple members of that crew got real close and personal with yesterday.”

“Why must you shoot all of your problems?”

“Because I was a gifted child and therefore emotionally stunted.”

Two of the bounty hunters headed in your direction, and Loki’s hand locked around your wrist like a vice, pulling you behind him with a sharp tug. The feeling of static electricity washed over you, making you wonder what exactly Loki thought he was doing. You made to question him, only to have nothing come out when you opened your mouth. 

He had actually removed your ability to speak, the jerk. How was that going to look to these guys?

The men arrived, and a familiar face looked up from his device. A familiar face which had a penchant for books and pink ladies with southern accents. 

Uh oh.

“Before we begin, do you have any relevant information about the theft you’d like to disclose?”

“Not at present, no.”

“All right, hold still.” The guy never even looked at you, which was strangely offensive. Didn’t he care whether you had any relevant information? He pushed a few buttons on his machine, it whirred, and then chirped. “Clear.”

You almost, almost, let out a sigh of relief when the second man’s eyes narrowed. “Do I know you from some’ere? You look familer.”

“I have garnered some notice by causing trouble from time to time. I will gladly cause more should you wish to press the issue.”

Something must be wrong with you for that phrase, when combined with his smooth timbre and unblinking stare, to strike you as rapidly approaching sexy.

The two crewmen glanced at each other and then back to Loki. “You’re free to go. However, if you know or come to know any information about the thief, you will be rewarded in turn.” 

Oh, but there was fire in that giant’s eyes. You’d managed to really get under his skin. Probably shouldn’t have needled him about his crush. Though maybe he was just salty about that heinous looking bruise by his eye.

“I will keep that in mind.” Loki turned and strode away, leaving you to trip after him. Once you’d rounded a corner, he released you and the static faded from your skin with a shiver up your spine.

You cleared your throat to test your vocal cords, and then when that produced sound asked, “What just happened?”

“They were searching for someone acting as another person, so instead I hid you completely.”

No wonder neither of those guys acknowledged your presence. “That was pretty smart play.”

“I learned it from myself.”

“I'm honestly a little surprised you don't use that Silencio trick to shut me up more often.”

“Yes, well, on occasion you do have something useful to say. As for the present, you must dispose of your weapon.” He didn’t break his rather quick stride even as you stumbled and hurried to catch up. 

“I’ve got to do what now?”

“It is conspicuous and counterproductive to our current objectives.”

“I’m not just going to throw away my gun.”

“I am not suggesting that. I can transport it safely back to Midgard. Such a small power surge will go beneath Heimdell’s notice.”

“No.” You made a full stop so that he was forced to either accommodate you or leave you behind completely. “Protocol dictates every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent carry at least a sidearm into any hostile environment.”

“The environment is only hostile due to your sidearm.” His tone was rife with impatience and a touch of condescension, and it grated on you like gravel in a blender. 

“I’m not giving up my only means of protection!”

His eyes narrowed with his frown. You’d found that nerve again. “Do you truly consider me so useless?”

“As far as defense goes, you are a fair-weather guard at best! Sure, right now you’re all about keeping me safe, but the minute you get rid of those extra memories, all bets are off. You could just leave me here to fend for myself, and that’s the best-case scenario. I’ll have to fight my way out of being eaten or dissected or put in a zoo. I won’t do well in a zoo, man. I don’t even like the bars on my widows, and they’re for keeping people out.”

He looked legitimately offended, and though he tried to hide it, a little dejected. “I would not simply… _abandon_ you.”

“Maybe _you_ wouldn’t, but the guy who stabbed me a few months ago? Who tried for a repeat performance only yesterday? _He’d_ do it just for giggles. No, you left me powerless once. You’re not going to do it again.”

He grimaced, like remembering the times he’d hurt you was painful, and maybe it was. The fight blew out of him, and his sadness became more apparent. “I give you my word that when this is finished, I will return you to your home, unscathed.”

“I’m just supposed to believe that? Tell me, what are you the god of again?”

A noise of frustration emanated from his throat, yet he still looked pained. “What must I do-”

“Nothing.” Could he, with his advanced alien senses, hear how fast your heart was beating? See your pulse thrumming? You linked your fingers behind your neck and wrapped your palms around to hide your throat from view. You pressed your fingers into a knot of tension, tried to will it to dissipate. “There is literally nothing you can do. I need my gun, or I’m not going to be okay. So get on board or take me home now.”

He was starting to pack his emotions away again, letting resignation take over. “I don’t suppose there’s a third option.”

“Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.” You, however, could still feel yourself wobbling on the edge of full-blown panic. And you were pretty sure he saw, despite your best efforts.

“All right,” he said, expression far too soft and understanding. “We’ll just have to lie low until the books arrive. Try not to make use of your weapon unless absolutely necessary.”

Your emotions were way too varied and mixed up to look him in the eye any longer, so you nodded in the general direction of your shoes.

Something pressed to the top of your head and sent you stiff. Then it was gone, and you saw Loki’s hand fall to his side. “We shouldn’t dawdle.”

You fell in a step behind him, eyes still downcast. That was the first time he’d touched you for a purpose other than necessity or violence. It had almost felt like comfort. For some reason, you thought about the memory of him reading, his hand on your shin. This was such a bad idea. You should have tried to find a way to contact Thor or Tony. You should have taken Rocket up on his offer to leave. Why were you so intent on helping the megalomaniac who’d tried to take over the world?

You risked a glance at the back of his head, only to find him sneaking a look back over his shoulder, which he quickly aborted. Yeah, that was the reason. No one should be forced to care so much about another person against his will. He may be the absolute worst, but he deserved jail time, not a sense of unrelenting duty towards someone he’d once kidnapped. Twice kidnapped.

Also, you didn’t want to live your life knowing that out in space somewhere was an alien god with an unnatural obsession towards you. That’s some hardcore ancient Greek god kind of junk right there and would be just a little too bizarre, even for you.


	10. I think I broke your memory.

“I don’t think this counts as lying low.”

No, in fact, it was quite high. The edge of a canyon to be exact.

“We are unlikely to be disturbed out here. Most visit this planet for the active trade, not to hike the wilderness.”

So you may have been sightseeing. What else were you going to do?

“I heard once that if you spit from the top of the Empire State Building, which is this really tall skyscraper in New York, that if you spit it'll turn to ice by the time it hits the sidewalk.”

“Do not spit into the canyon.” 

“Spoilsport. The science always seemed a little shaky anyway.” You sank to the ground, peripherally noting Loki frown as you dangled your feet over the side.

“Must you continuously walk the narrow edge of disaster?”

“Must, no. But not gonna lie, it’s probably going to keep happening.” You brushed hair out of your face, letting the breeze catch it. He stood a few paces away, foot up on a rock and arm draped casually across his knee as he surveyed the deep chasm. With the sun lighting up his stoic expression and the wind rustling his dark hair, you could see how ancient people had mistaken these beings for gods. “Hey, why did you try to take over earth?”

He turned his head in your direction just enough for you to see his raised eyebrow. “Is that really a topic you wish to pursue?”

“I’m curious. I mean, I get the pursuit of power and delusions of grandeur part. But why earth? Why not a second stab at Asgard? Or Jotenheim? Or any other planet that didn’t contain a pack of super people primed to take you down?”

“I suppose the simple answer is because of Thor. He swore to protect your people, and if I could take Midgard from him, I would show myself his equal.”

You let his statement hang in the air for long enough to skirt uncomfortable. “So you attacked my planet just to undermine your brother’s ego?”

He averted his gaze back to the crevice, and when he spoke again his tone was flat. “You should not ask questions when you know you will be disappointed with the answers.”

“For the record, that’s stupid advice. Answers are important, disappointing or not. Speaking of which, what’s your beef with Thor, anyway? Did he always take the top bunk? Steal your Judy Jetson lunch box? Tape over your ballet recital?”

“He lorded his superiority over me our entire lives, which culminated in his tossing me into an endless abyss.”

“…seriously?”

“You doubt me?”

“Almost always, but specifically in this case it doesn’t sound like Thor.”

“I didn’t realize you knew my brother so well.”

You paused again. “Okay, point you. I’ve only talked to him a few times. But he let you blast him with a giant laser robot. And he was still trying to reason with you, up until the point you stabbed him, and even then he didn’t so much as throw you off the building, let alone into an _abyss_. Are you sure you’re not, like, retconning your relationship based on how you feel now?”

“Why don’t you judge for yourself whether I am misremembering?”

You blinked, and the canyon disappeared. Instead you sat on a wall, staring into infinite space. Small voices rang out behind you, and you turned to see a group of children playing nearby. Everything seemed to be going fine, until a blonde boy pushed one of his darker-haired companions back.

“I am king, and I only have room for warriors in my party. Go back to your books.”

The others laughed like he was a mini Don Rickles. They all ran off together, waving their wooden swords and leaving the remaining little boy to look absolutely destroyed. You stood up, watching the boy run towards the pipe organ palace of Asgard. You glanced over to see Loki watching as well, his face a carefully maintained mask of impassivity.

“Okay, that was awful. But you guys were kids. Kids are mean. Almost universally so.”

Another blink and the scene changed again. Now you stood in a golden hallway lit by fire and lined with… blankets?

“…that was the rage of battle.”

“I see.”

Adult Thor and Loki stood side by side in full finery, including Loki’s ridiculous horned helmet.

“How else could I have fought my way through a hundred warriors and pulled us out alive?”

“As I recall, I was the one who veiled us in smoke to ease our escape.”

Thor laughed heartily. “Yes. Some do battle, others just do tricks.”

A nearby attendant laughed, and Loki promptly turned his goblet of wine into a goblet of live snakes. The real Loki looked to you for your reaction. You shrugged.

“That was kind of belittling but seems like typical brotherly bickering to me. I certainly said worse to my siblings.”

The air around you filled with snow. Even though you knew it wasn’t real, _you knew_ , you still felt your heart stutter as the literally giant men now surrounding you grew ice swords around their hands. Nearby you saw Loki approach Thor and speak quietly but urgently into his ear.

“Thor, stop and think. Look around you. We’re outnumbered.”

“Know your place, Brother.”

You flinched. “You got me on that one. That was 100% a dick thing to say. But still – far cry from abyss territory.”

The snow and cliffs became space once more, and you found yourself standing on the rainbow bridge in Asgard. What was left of it, anyway. The end broke off into jagged points, and there stood a solitary man, holding something over the edge. You had to lean to get a clear view, and saw that it was, in fact, Thor and Loki. Slowly, Thor’s fingers uncurled from the staff that connected them, and Loki fell into some kind of portal and disappeared.

“Do you still doubt?” the Loki beside you asked.

“Yeah, kind of.” You met his raised eyebrows with another shrug. “It’s weird. This memory. There’s something off about it, right? It’s different from the others, different even from the other timeline memories.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on, you have to see it!” You walked over to the man you decided was Odin, frozen with Thor dangling in his grip. The two seemed… fuzzy. Almost unfocused. You reached out, and perhaps imagined you felt some resistance. You pushed and the whole area seemed to flicker, like bad TV reception. Then it flashed out and reappeared, Odin once again holding Thor holding a staff holding Loki. “Uh… I have no idea what I just did, but I think I broke your memory.”

“Loki, no.” Thor sounded concerned, and you wondered briefly what he didn’t want Loki to do. Then you watched Loki release his hold and fall a second time, now with the backing of Thor’s drawn out, more emphatic, “Noooooo!”

“Huh… any idea what that was?”

Unfortunately, Loki was staring at his father and brother, features unmoving. He wasn’t even blinking.

“Could someone… I mean, is it possible that someone altered your memory? Made you think Thor betrayed you?”

His eyes flashed to you. “How did you do that?”

You held up both your hands defensively. “Woah, once again, I didn’t _do_ anything. I just touched something I probably shouldn’t have, and voila! You tossed your own self into the abyss.”

“Why do you keep saying that word?”

“It’s your word.” You didn’t like how he was looking at you, mostly because you couldn’t parse out what he was thinking. “Maybe we should-” 

You shifted your weight uneasily, and surface beneath your foot abruptly gave way with a crack, sending you hurtling downwards too quickly for your stomach to keep pace. The impact on your elbows sent a jolt through your whole system, and your back spasmed in protest. Over the blood pounding in your ears you heard Loki approach. “Are you all right?”

“My bruises have bruises.”

“Perhaps you should endeavor to fall less.”

“Why don’t you come down here and say that?” The sandy canyon edge was back, and absently you gave thanks that Loki had oriented his illusions so you walked away from the drop-off. One of your legs had punched through some kind wooden plank into an almost chilly hole below, and the splintered remains dug into your thigh painfully. You scrabbled the other leg, trying to find purchase with your foot, but you couldn’t push yourself up high enough with your arms to get the right angle. “No, really, come down here. I could use a hand.”

“Helpless creature.” He appeared at your side to contemplate the situation. Extraction would be tricky, because there was only so far you could sit up with your leg straight out behind you. He settled on one arm wrapped around your stomach and an additional handful of the fabric at your hip. His first pull moved you by inches before a snag on your pant leg halted further progress.

“Hold on – I think I’m caught.” You tried to fish around for whatever was stuck, but you couldn’t get more than your fingers into the space left by your leg.

“You might hurry. This position is becoming rather uncomfortable.”

He was right about that. The day had grown hot, and your back was beginning to sweat. Not to mention he was breathing on your neck, which was both gross and ticklish. You gave up and pulled your hand free. “It’s no use. Think you can yank hard enough to tear whatever’s stuck?”

Turns out it was skin. Skin had been stuck.

Not a lot, though. A firm tug had you free with another crack of wood and a new rip down the front of your pant leg to just below the knee. You bent over to inspect the damage and found a matching line on your skin, parts of it spotting with blood. 

“Another injury?” His tone was remarkably disinterested. 

“It’s not bad, but I’d really like to go one day with all of my blood staying on the inside where it belongs.” You stared down into the darkness beyond the hole you’d made. “What is this?”

“An abandoned mine or cave system, I expect. We best watch our step. I imagine there are more covered entrances. Can you walk?”

You tested some weight and winced at the sting as the torn skin pulled. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Come, then, before you collapse outright.”

“Your bedside manner sucks.”

You limped your way back to town and your hotel (if that was the correct term). You pushed yourself to move at something close to normal speed, fearing that he would insist on carrying you if you didn’t keep up. Your bed was a welcome sight, but the relief of being off your feet had barely set in before Loki was handing you the filled wash basin and a folded cloth. “Clean your wound,” was all he said before he once more swept out of the room.

By the time he’d returned, you’d stripped off your pants and cleared most of the debris from your scratch. It was more ragged than deep, and fortunately would not require stitches. He paused next to you, but you didn’t know if it was because of your naked legs or his indecisiveness over what to do with his cargo. After a few unsettling seconds, he presented it all to you. “I assume you can dress it yourself?”

“Yeah, I’ve got this.”

He stood for another moment, giving you a massive case of second-hand awkward, before he finally sat on the other bed. You made it all the way through the process under his attentive watch before he spoke again. “The bandages on your arm should be changed as well.”

“All right, Florence, chill out.” You hadn’t given much thought to your arm recently. The wrapping was rather grimy at this point, but the cut underneath was much improved. You prodded the tender skin experimentally, but it didn’t start bleeding again. You began shifting your leftover supplies to the bedside table when you caught Loki staring at you like he was working his way up to being aghast. “What?”

“Are you not going to re-bandage it?”

“Some fresh air will do it good.”

“You are on an alien planet with pathogens your frail human physiology is unaccustomed to.”

“You and your fixation on my frail human physiology.”

“You are simply begging for a nasty infection.”

“Fine!” You held out your full hands in his direction and glared when all he did was sit up straighter. “I don’t feel like struggling through this one-handed, so if it bothers you that much, you take care of it.”

He moved to stand next to you and accept the supplies. Then after even more hesitation, he lowered himself to sit on the edge of your bed. You scrutinized him, trying to gauge his state of mind, as he dabbed at your arm with a liquid that burned like antiseptic. Though the ability had come in handy, you kind of wished you weren’t so good at reading him, because when he opened his mouth you already knew what he was going to say. 

So you didn’t let him. “Don’t say it.”

His eyes jumped to yours for just a second, then fell back to his task, and you knew he was on the verge of disobeying you and apologizing anyway. 

“Don’t,” you ordered more sharply. “You’re not sorry, not really. You’re supposed to be getting a handle on this.”

“I am _trying_.” He could barely get the words out with how tightly he clenched his teeth. Yet for all the tension in his jaw, his touch remained uncomfortably gentle. 

“Try harder.” You saw his mouth pinch and twitch, like he wanted to retort but either couldn’t or wouldn’t allow himself. “The more you give in, the madder you’ll be when it’s over and the more likely you are to kill me.”

“I’m not going to-”

“I know! You’re not going to leave me, you’re not going to kill me. But as I said before, what you believe now has no bearing on what’s actually going to happen, and I have very little in the way of defenses.”

“You have your gun.”

“You’ve already planned a way around that.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t answer, eyes resolutely on your arm. “Which is irrelevant, because its power cell is nearly exhausted. Look, the point is, I don’t want to end up murdered and sold to an intergalactic meat-packing plant so I can be mixed up with space cow to make alien hot dogs.”

“You are always so dramatic.”

“Says the guy who tried to take over an entire planet just to one up his brother.”

He sighed as he tied off the gauze. “If it will give you peace of mind, after the books arrive, I will return you to earth before I remove the memories so you will be able to shore up your defenses. Call my brother and his friends for all I care.”

“They won’t be happy to see you.”

“Very few are.”

Well, that was a particularly depressing statement. 

“I won’t,” you said, waiting until he met your eyes before continuing. “I won’t call them until you’re gone. I think that’s a pretty fair trade. And I have more than enough stockpiled in my apartment to make killing me too much of a bother.”

“We have a deal, then.”

You both sat in silence for a few scant moments, but you’d never done well with silences.

“So, uh, are we gonna talk about what happened out there?”

“How you fell in a hole and had to be extricated?”

“No! How someone did a shoddy Photoshop job on your memory. Don’t you think you should address how your entire reason for invading my planet may have been based on a misunderstanding?”

He twisted to lay the rest of the supplies aside, but mostly to evade eye contact. “It is irrelevant.”

“How is it irrelevant? It seems extremely relevant!”

“What’s done is done. I see no point in questioning it now.”

“All the points! Every single point! You waged a large-scale attack based on a lie that Thanos guy probably implanted. How can you just gloss over that?”

“It changes nothing.” His voice grew flatter the more yours rose. That made you feel like you were losing the conversation, so you applied a measure of control to your next words.

“It _should_. It should change something.”

“In what way? Do you seek an apology now?” He had the nerve to still sound so detached. You wanted to hit him. Unsurprisingly, you spent most of your time wanting to hit him.

“No,” you huffed, digging the palm of your hand into your eye like you could force back your growing headache, “what good would that do?”

“Then I do not know what you expect of me.”

“Maybe some remorse? I repeat, you waged war on an entire planet for _no good reason_.” You knew at this point you were harping, trying to get water out of a rock, but you desperately needed any proof that you weren’t shackled to an absolute sociopath.

“Would you think twice of disturbing an anthill?”

“Again with the ant analogy?” Antalogy? Ha. “But, yeah, I probably would think twice if the ants started having philosophical debates with me about why they deserved to live.”

“Perhaps you simply haven’t learned their language yet.”

Huh.

“Okay, I have a lot going on right now, and I really don’t need an existential crisis on top of everything else.”

“I merely offered the suggestion. You may do with it as you will. After all, answers are important.”

“Don’t quote me back to me. I know what I said.” Okay, now you were starting to sound petulant. What is it with this guy? Why did he always bring out the worst in you? “So that’s it? You’re just going to go with the whole ‘no regrets’ ideology?”

“I have no time for regrets.”

“Don’t you guys live for thousands of years or something?”

“I have no delusions that I will be able to maintain my flight indefinitely. Eventually, someone will catch me, and that will be the end. Until then, I intend to enjoy my freedom fully.”

“That’s one way to go with it, I guess.”

“Would you prefer I turn myself in? Appeal to the mercy of those who would condemn me?”

“It’s an idea. Maybe you’d even get leniency, based on the whole altered memory thing.”

“And who would believe me, should I argue that I had been manipulated?”

“Thor would. But… yeah, he’s probably the only one. Okay, another point for you. That’s two, if you’re keeping score.”

“Eight more and I’ll have a plaque made.”

“As long as you have a goal. Goals are important, too.” You looked away, shifting awkwardly because his weight was tilting you towards him despite your best efforts. "Anyway, you should get off my bed. I’m not wearing pants.”

“Are you worried I will impinge upon your honor?” He was smirking in a way he hadn’t since this whole convoluted business began.

“Ugh, why do you always have to sound like a cheesy historical romance? Seriously, go away. The moment is over.”

He obeyed, though he smiled all the while. You dug the blankets out from under you as you watched him sink into his own bed.

“Hey, um… if you ever do, you know, start to feel bad about what you did, will you tell me?”

“Why?”

“Because… it’s… important.”

“Many things are important to you.”

“Maybe if more things were important to you, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Which mess?”

“I don’t know. There’s too many to keep track of now.” You pulled the blanket up over your shoulder and turned to face the wall. “Just… forget it. Good night, sweet dreams, whatever. Thanks for not leaving me to die in a hole.”

For once he didn’t respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behind the scenes tidbit: I did not give this character a love of puns. She did it herself. Don't get me wrong, I too love puns. But this was not a conscious decision. Obviously, she has become semi-sentient and we should all be mildly worried.


	11. Walk, walk, fashion, baby.

“Why are you naked?”

“Please, I am hardly naked.” 

“I rounded down.” You squinted through adjusting eyes, watching him scrub his bare chest and trying to get your foggy brain woken up enough to realize you should probably avert your gaze from his highness’ royal sponge bath. Though you had to wonder if that dripping water wasn’t collecting in the waistband of his trousers.

“You could do with a washing yourself before your odor becomes even more offensive.”

“Okay, rude. I literally just woke up.”

“My apologies. When would be a better time to mention your potency?”

“You’re lucky this bed is so comfortable, or I’d show you potency.”

“You may get fresh water down the hall,” he continued as he tugged on his shirt, apparently unperturbed by both his damp skin and your lazy threats. “The room will be yours for the length of time it takes me to return with breakfast. I suggest you don’t dawdle.”

Your eyes drifted to the pants draped over the footboard, prominent bloodstained tear rending one leg. “Wait, how am I supposed to make it down the hall? I destroyed my pants yesterday.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You have said of yourself that you are clever.”

He didn’t even look at you as he swept out of the room. Jerk. You snuck one last glance at the door, just in case he made a surprise return, and lifted your arm to take a whiff. You immediately wrinkled your nose.

Okay, so he wasn’t wrong. He was still a jerk.

Already mourning your separation from the bed, you threw back the covers and considered your pants. They were sure to draw some unwanted attention. But then, so would running around in your underwear. You decided suspicious pants was the lesser of two evils and tugged them on before heading to the… water closet.

(It worked on two levels, because it was both where you could get water and also held the communal toilet. You were very proud of this observation, even if Loki hadn’t been nearly as amused).

You didn’t often run into the inn’s other residents. Most people hurried in and out as quickly as possible, probably to make the most of that booming trade Loki had mentioned. You gave thanks for this, as you were able to get to the tiny room with absolutely no social encounters. Unfortunately, the quiet made you feel a little too secure, so that when you exited a short while later to find the innkeeper right outside the door, the fresh bowl of water almost ended up down your front.

“Sorry, dear, didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No problem. I just didn’t expect to see anyone.” You hadn’t spoken to this lady much, but she always seemed nice enough, if a little stern, with her high-necked blouse and straight line of a mouth, oddly light bulb shaped head notwithstanding. 

“I was just about to tidy the rooms, so I wanted to make sure of who hadn’t left yet.”

“Oh…” you tried to smile naturally, all too aware of your gun tucked away under your pillow, “you can skip our room today. We’re getting a bit of a late start.”

“I can see that.” She sounded like she might be judging you, but her facial expression didn’t shift until her eyes darted down and her brows jumped up. “Oh my, what happened to your slacks?”

You looked down, too, scrambling for a reasonable explanation. “I, uh… fell.”

“Onto a blade?” Now she sounded scandalized, but before you could reply she held up a hand. “Never mind. In any case, you can’t go running around with all your business hanging out like that. I’ll see to scrounging you up some new clothes.”

You were still trying to figure out what business your thigh was doing and why she didn’t mention the blood when her last sentence registered, and you looked up to see her already walking away. “That’s… you don’t have to do that.”

She merely glanced over her shoulder, never stopping. “You arrived with no luggage. Someone must keep you clothed.”

You were left to stare at the empty staircase she’d disappeared down, wondering what it was about you that made everyone think you needed to be kept. Then your bowl tilted enough to slosh the water, and you decided you’d best be on your way before she could return to lecture you about making a mess.

You did not strip completely, because you didn’t know if Loki (or the innkeeper, for that matter) would have the decency to knock. When a rapping did come, you were quick to secure a towel around your middle and crack the door open before anyone could become impatient. There stood the unsmiling woman with a pile of fabrics in her arms. “Here you are, dear. These should fit you well enough – I am very good at estimating these things on sight alone.”

“Thank you.” You accepted the bundle one-handed, the other continuing to clutch the towel, because if she thought your leg was business, she would definitely not appreciate an eyeful of your cleavage. At least you were cleaner now. And a little concerned with why you suddenly cared about her opinion. “This is too kind of you, and I really do appreciate it.”

“I’ll add the cost to your final bill.”

“Oh…”

She arched one eyebrow. “I am running an inn, not a charity, young lady.”

“Yeah, of course, sorry.” A little more than 24 hours prior you’d taken out a whole handful of space pirates, and yet this woman made you want to cower in the corner and beg her forgiveness.

With a nod, she turned and strode down the hall once more, calling back, “Best get a move on. Your day is slipping away.”

“Right. Thank you!” You closed the door and leaned against it for a few seconds. Was that last thank you really called for? You shook your head sharply and went about getting dressed. Fortunately, the clothes were recognizable and easy to get on: loose shirt with no sleeves, jacket-y thing, and baggy pants that on earth would probably fall into the category of ‘cargo.’

You were in the process of rearranging your hair into some sort of order when Loki swept in, without a knock as you’d previously feared. You watched in the mirror as he stopped short and eyed your new apparel. “Where did you get those?”

“The lady that runs this joint. Apparently, the tear in my pants personally offended her. But look: pockets!”

He glanced down as you presented your outfit, and then back up at your face. “Yes?”

“Ugh,” you rolled your eyes and turned back to the mirror, “men never appreciate pockets the way women do.”

“Are the females of your species disallowed the transportation of personal effects?”

“No, we’re just required to buy additional bags for the transporting.”

“That is rather devious.”

“Isn’t it, though? Hey, did you get breakfast?”

You ate quickly so you could leave quickly, fearing the return of the innkeeper and her disappointment. You tried to explain to Loki why this disappointment must be avoided at all costs, but you were pretty sure he thought you’d suddenly taken leave of your senses.

Hiking led to injuries. Previously mentioned space pirates tended to lurk in the market. And the landlady’s judgement permeated even your closed door. So Loki decided the only safe course of action was a return to the library. You could check on your order status, and then browse the books until lunch.

Unfortunately, to get back to the hallowed building you would still need to walk through several blocks of the market. You kept an eye out even as you kept your head down. You’d had enough run-ins with bounty hunters, and now you just wanted to go be a book nerd instead of a brawler for a little while. You spotted what you figured were a few of the crewmates, but they didn’t seem interested in you at all, especially now that your clothes blended in so much better.

You’d almost allowed yourself to relax a notch when Loki abruptly shoved you between two stalls, one selling rugs and the other so many spices your nose began to tickle. You stumbled into the wall before he stopped, his hands still lightly on your hips as if forgotten as he peeked between wares, trying to get a clear view of the street without being seen himself.

“What is it? Did one of the bounty hunters spot us?”

“Not exactly…”

“What’s _that_ mean?” You tried to see around him to where he was looking, but then he took another step toward you, now right up in your space, and your head hit the wall hard enough make a noise.

“Do you see that man perusing the jewelry?” He seemed unaware of your discomfort, still peering around the hanging carpets. You swallowed your anxiety and took another look. 

“You mean the guy who looks like Laurence Olivier’s King Richard III?”

“Once more I will simply have to assume you are following the conversation.” He presented you with his signature put-out face and returned to watching the fancy man shop. “I believe he is the one who called for the bounty your rodent friend sought. The… inconvenience I caused him is in line with the asking price. Anyone with true grievance would have offered a much higher reward.”

“Oh, now that you found out an escaped lab animal is worth more than you, suddenly the bounty is too low.”

“Should he see me,” the words were stiffer in order to overtake yours, “he will cause us unwanted difficulties.”

“Okay, so be someone else. I don’t know why you went out without putting Steve on in the first place.”

“Your bounty hunters’ quest to locate the impostor who infiltrated their ranks has made such a course unwise . And you expressed displeasure with that particular disguise.”

“For heaven’s sake-” You took a deep breath to stall your tirade. “Fine. So put on a different face until we get past Mr. Fancy-Pants, and then be you again.”

“He will sense my magic should I make use of it now.”

“And he’ll just know the magic is yours?” You paused to scrutinize his profile. “What exactly did you do to make this guy take out a bounty on you anyway?”

It was strange how very little in his face could change, but his expression could still become completely different. “Let’s just say we did not part ways on the best of terms.”

“Let’s say a little more.”

“We had a… disagreement over how much of his wealth should remain in his possession.”

“Is that… is that where you got the money you’ve been spending on everything?”

“Where else?”

“Have you ever thought of getting a job instead of just pulling them?”

“Sounds tedious.”

“Probably less tedious than prison.”

The other man turned to hold a necklace up to the sunlight, and Loki jerked around to hide his face. You met his eyes for all of a second before you pointed a finger up at him. “Don’t you dare kiss me.”

To his credit, he appeared entirely confused. “Pardon?”

“I know how this goes. Public displays of affection make people look away. But try it, and I will kick you into the street. Then he’ll definitely see you.”

“Believe me, the thought of kissing you never crossed me mind.”

“Good.” But then you thought about it, and your frown deepened. “Wait, why not?”

“Are you serious? You are the most-”

“Uh oh.” You grabbed his head with both hands and yanked it down next to yours. His hands jumped from your waist to the wall to keep his balance. The other man had turned even more, and if he had the ability to look away from shiny objects, he’d be able to see you easily. “Just… just stay there for a minute.”

“At least you bathed.” For all appearances, he might be whispering sweet nothings or giving you a hickey, except you weren’t exactly sure how to make your expression look the slightest bit romanced. Also, he was breathing on your neck again. Uck.

You both stood in silence as the unwitting man continued to admire what appeared to be every single bauble on sale. Your arms were getting tired, and from how Loki shifted you could guess his back was stiff. At one point you flexed your fingers, inadvertently rubbing against his scalp, and he made some kind of movement that was probably a shiver. Or maybe it was another back spasm. Any minute you expected someone to yell at you for public indecency, or at least ask why you were so bad at it. 

You let out a sigh as the idiot began trying on rings. “We have stories about you on earth, you know. Myths, from, like, 9th century Scandinavia, way before the whole failed hostile takeover of New York from more recent memory.”

“I am aware.” 

“Some get real weird, like one where you had a fling with a hot-to-trot stallion and gave birth to an eight-legged horse.”

You could feel him begin to pull back and tightened your grip. Still, you could tell he was unhappy by his tone alone. “What?”

“Chill out. You were also a horse at the time, so it’s not as weird as it could have been, I guess. Other stories say that you’re Odin’s blood brother and have a wife but hook up with a giant and sire a pack of monster children. Pretty sure they include the wolf the Hulk fought in that one memory from Asgard and the lady with the elaborate, modern art headdress. So yeah, humans took some artistic liberties.”

“Do you have a purpose in bringing this up?”

“Maybe? I mean, this situation reminds me of one story where Thor’s hammer ended up with a giant who would only give it back if he got to marry Freyja, who’s like the hottest goddess there is and of course will not consent to waste all that hotness on some rando giant. So instead Thor dressed up like a bride and you shapeshifted into his bridesmaid, and then you two skipped off to giant land and managed to fool all of them, even though Thor ate an entire ox on his own in a very unladylike manner. Anyway, Thor got his hammer back and killed all the giants and nobody got married, the end.”

“Fascinating.” But he didn’t sound fascinated. You tried to glance at him out of the corner of your eye and actually felt him lean forward more as if to keep his face obscured.

“Wait, did that one actually happen?”

“Probably not as your storytellers reported, considering they are so given to their ‘artistic liberties.’”

“But the gist of it? The cross-dressing? The going undercover? Thor being a really unconvincing blushing bride?” You didn’t get a verbal answer, but his silence was telling. “Dude, I’ll warn you, this is never going away.”

“Lucky me. However, you’re nattering did have the positive result of giving me an idea.” 

“If it’s good enough I’ll even ignore that nattering comment.”

He moved his hands between you to conceal the small, apparently imperceptible flash of his magic, while you tried (and most likely failed) to watch inconspicuously. 

“Did you just conjure a blanket? What are you going to do with that?”

“If you will tell me when his back is turned, I’ll show you.”

You looked up just in time to see the man turn to the stand to continue his perusal. “You’re clear.”

Loki stepped back and swung the cloth over his head. With a few twists, he had it wrapped around himself in such a way that only his eyes showed. “Now we should be able to avoid detection.”

You didn’t move but eyed the bright silk skeptically. “That’s it? I kind of expected it to be an invisibility cloak or something, but you’re really going with ‘little girl plays dress-up’?”

“If you have a better plan, I am all ears.”

“Fine, let’s just get out of here.”

He turned to exit your hiding spot, a noticeable sway to the movement. Decidedly, almost exaggeratedly, feminine. If you didn’t know the truth, you might have bought it.

“Walk, walk, fashion, baby,” you muttered, head tilting. Then you saw the edge of his wrap coming loose, just as he was almost face to face with Richard III. You dove, clutching at his arm and the fabric to keep it in place. He stumbled just a little, but you giggled and immediately began to ramble in your best teenage girl voice. “So we were watching this movie, right? But then it got done and all of a sudden, bam! We’re kissing. Like a lot. Then it’s like he realizes what’s happening and pulls back. Says he’s sorry, that he shouldn’t have come at me like that without asking. And I’m just looking at him, because the whole time he’s trying to apologize for taking advantage of me, where are my hands? Whoops! Right up his shirt. But honestly, who could blame me? Those abs deserve a fan club.”

Loki was giving you a _look_ , powerful even when his eyes were all you could see. You sent him one back that clearly said, ‘Hey man, I’m doing my best.’ And it appeared to be working, too. Richie didn’t so much as glance your direction. At least until he took a step back and you walked right into him.

“Oh, sorry!”

“Pardon me.”

“My bad.”

“Not at all.”

You gave him a polite smile, and then turned back to Loki. “So, anyway-”

“But perhaps you can be of some assistance to me.”

Oh crap.

You could feel your smile tighten as you turned back to him. “Yes?”

What could this baroque jerk want? Could he sense Loki, even hidden and without his magic? Would you be able to get your gun out and blast him before he called attention to his offered reward? You already had the bounty hunters on your tail – you didn’t need to give them another reason to track you down.

“Which cut do you prefer?” He held up two rings, the gems of which were so large they nearly blinded you with reflective sunlight.

“Uh… this one.” You pointed to his right hand, almost forgetting to look. “It’s, like, way sparklier.”

Yeah, definitely a reason you didn’t do a lot of field work…

“I do believe you’re right. Thank you very much.”

“Sure thing.” You renewed your grip on Loki’s slipping disguise and made your escape without further interruption.

“Do you practice sounding that vapid, or does it come naturally?”

“Shut up. You’re wearing a blanket.”

“It’s not a blanket.” With a swoosh befitting his dramatic threshold, he whipped the cloth off like a bull fighter.

“Sure looks like a blanket.” Actually, it looked rather familiar. Your eyes narrowed as a memory struck you. “Wait, is that the dress the woman who called me a pet tried to sell us? Did you steal her dress?”

“No.”

What other explanation could there be?

Unless…

“Oh.” You watched him fold it deliberately, feeling your frustration simmer. He hadn’t stolen it in the moment as an improvised disguise. He’d purchased it, earlier. For you. Because you’d wrecked your pants. But he didn’t just buy you serviceable replacements. No, he bought a dress, something pretty and feminine and potentially flattering based on the comments of some lady who’d been trying to make a sale. Or maybe he was invoking that memory of Sakaar. Either way... “You have to stop.”

“I did nothing.”

“The fact that you know what I’m talking about shows that you did.” You tried to keep your expression neutral as he twisted his hands and the neat square vanished. Yet, he still didn’t look at you. “You know I can’t accept that.”

When he finally did meet your gaze, he maintained a silence long enough for you to notice exactly how blue his eyes were. “I don’t recall offering.”

“Good.” You shoved your hands in your new jacket’s lovely pockets, all of a sudden feeling inexplicably tired. “Hey, do you mind if we go back to the room? I’m starting to get a headache. I think this planet’s atmospheric pressure is different than earth’s.”

His only response was to study you in a way that was decidedly unsettling. 

“Actually,” you continued, “you probably don’t have to come if you’d rather still go to the library. I think I can find my way back on my own, and then I’m probably just going to nap anyway. Nothing too exciting.”

“I… will see you safely to the inn first.”

“Okay.”

He walked you all the way back to your room, leaving you with a long look that seemed to be attempting to diagnose an illness on sight alone. The attention only made your headache worse, and you almost had to slam the door in his face to get him to leave. You flopped down on your bed, at which point the gun in your waistband dug painfully into the small of your back. As you pulled it out with a grunt to shove it back under your pillow, you thought how if Loki really wanted to show you affection, he would have bought you a holster.

Not that you wanted him to show you affection. But if he was going to do it despite your protestations, he could have at least done it right.


	12. It's the hardest place I ever tried to go.

You laid on Clint’s unnaturally comfortable couch, his six-month-old daughter asleep on your chest, her fuzzy little head within perfect nuzzling range. Cooper sat on the floor nearby, beating a toy drum in an oddly regularly rhythm for such a young child.

_tap tap tap_

_tap tap tap_

You closed your eyes and felt the weight on your chest shift, become lighter, less… organic. Your whole body jolted, stomach jumping with the same feeling you get whenever you trip. You pulled your arms tighter, trying to hang on to little Lila, but something was wrong. What was going on?

_TAP TAP TAP_

You opened your eyes and found yourself in the dark, no babies or couches in sight. The weight on your chest was your new jacket, wrapped in your arms like a safety blanket.

Your nap had run a little long.

_TAP TAP TAP_

And there was someone rapping, rapping at your chamber door.

You slung your jacket to the side and stumbled to the door, yanking it open before you thought to question who could possibly want to talk to you. Lamplight flooded the room, knocking you back with almost physical force as you ducked away from the barrage.

“Been sitting in the dark long, dear?”

“I must have dozed off.”

“Tuckered out from your long day of sleeping in, I imagine.” The landlady had returned to give further insights on your inferior life choices.

You finally got your eyes to squint open enough to see her and tried not to sound too hostile. “Was there something you needed?”

“I see I was right about the clothes.”

You glanced down at your outfit, not even bothering to smooth out the new wrinkles. “Uh, yeah. Thanks again.”

“I’m surprised you could sleep at all,” she continued in a way that made you wonder if you were an active participant in this conversation, “what with all of that hullabaloo out there.”

Exactly what alien word could be translated as hullabaloo?

Then you noticed the din to which she was referring, and it truly was a ruckus. Shouts and music and laughter drifted up from the street below. “What is that?”

“A recurring party they all throw themselves to celebrate how much money they’ve made. Or to smother the pain of economic failure. I can’t be sure – I never participate myself.”

“Oh…” You didn’t know what response she was fishing for, so you tried for something relatively neutral. “Cool?”

You stood in silence for a few long moments, hand still on the door in preparation for when you’d be allowed to shut it. You still weren’t entirely sure what this woman was doing here.

“Well?” she finally prompted. “Are you going to go down?”

“To… to the party? I mean-”

“You didn’t come all the way from Terra just to spend all your time inside this room, did you?”

“No… wait, how did you know…?”

“I have been doing this job for a very long time.”

“Right.” You really wished someone had provided you with your lines for this scene.

“But,” she barreled on, “what I will not stand for is a woman locking herself away while her man goes out carousing, simply because they’ve had a little tiff.”

“We didn’t have a tiff,” you muttered, and then almost as an afterthought added, “and he’s not my man.”

“He follows you around like an unloved pet.” At this point she probably would have rolled her eyes, if she were the type of person to do such a thing. “He’s yours.”

With no good argument at the ready, all you could offer was, “I didn’t ask for him.”

“Will you be attending the festivities or not?”

She was going to give you whiplash.

“You know, for an innkeeper, you don’t seem very fond of keeping people in your inn.”

“Young lady, I am the sole proprietor and employee of this establishment. The only peace I am allowed is when all the residents are occupied elsewhere.”

Now you felt a little attacked. “I was sleeping! I couldn’t possibly have disturbed your peace.”

“I must always be prepared to provide for the needs of my guests. Your mere presence puts me on alert.”

“I have no needs! Feel free to just…” you trailed off as she held out a folded bundle of cloth you were becoming more and more familiar with. “Where did you get that?”

“Your man thought to use it as payment for the clothes I provided to you. As I have no use for something so indulgent, you should wear it tonight.”

“Why do you keep trying to dress me? Is this some kind of service we paid extra for? Because I’d really like to cancel it.” You took another look at her dour face and realized you would indeed be attending a party. You accepted the dress and allowed it unfurl, at which point you remembered that it was, in essence, just a blanket. “Um… I don’t actually know how to put this on.”

“Not to worry.” She bustled past you and switched on the lamp in your room. Then she began turning you about with dizzying efficiency, swathing you in the cloth until it resembled the dress it purported to be, hanging from one shoulder and wrapping around your body all the way to your feet. “Now simply remove your trousers, and you will be ready to go.”

“Do what now?”

“They are ruining the dress’s draping.” She shifted the slightest bit, but it was enough to convince you that if you didn’t take them off, she would. You struggled through the layers, finally getting the pants unfastened and shimming them down to be kicked off.

“What about my shirt?” you asked, afraid of the answer.

“That may stay – it has been incorporated into the outfit.”

“That’s a relief. So… what now?”

“The party, dear.”

“Just… just walk out there?”

“That is generally how one gets to where one is going.”

“Yeah, but-”

“If you are expecting an escort from me, you will be severely disappointed. I suggest finding that man of yours to hold your hand.”

“He’s not my-” You swallowed down the rest of your denial, knowing you needed to ration your energy if you were going to make it through the night. “Okay. Thank you for the unsolicited makeover. Enjoy your empty inn.”

“I intend, too.”

“Ha, inn-tend. I see what you did there.” Your smile faded when her expression didn’t even flicker. “Or maybe I don’t.”

“Have a good evening, dear.”

“You, too.”

There was a good chance you had some deep-seated, psychological issues related to craving the approval of those you saw as parental figures. You should probably give your therapist a call whenever you get back into cell range.

You stepped out the front door and were immediately struck by the thought that this was a terrible idea. The street was filled, and everyone appeared so… happy seemed too tame a word. Maybe ecstatic in the more mystical sense, if the religion was economic gain. Jubilant was closer. 

Drunk. The word you were looking for was drunk. 

It was frankly overstimulating, and you’d already decided to stick as close to the fringes as possible even before you remembered the constant threat of being commodified. You hoped everyone was too distracted with their own merrymaking to realize you’d gone public domain. You avoided the worst of the crush, dodged a couple that nearly stumbled into you, and ducked under the flailing tentacle of someone making an emphatic point. 

Such a bad, bad idea.

Still, you were doing pretty well, until someone bumped into you from your blind spot and knocked you straight into a group of people jumping and twirling about in concentric circles. You steadied yourself and realized you were now trapped by multiple walls of gyrating bodies. It was like some hellish, reverse Farmer in the Dell, except with aliens instead of the classmates who’d always left you to be the cheese.

Faces and colors smeared together until you were too discombobulated to know left from right. A few people darted past you, like it was a game to weave in and out of the dancers safely. Well, anything they could do, you could do better. Or at least as well. Or at least proficiently enough to get you out of this nightmare.

You forced yourself to focus on the beat of the music and the patterns of the dancers. Eventually, you identified the regular points where spaces lined up through all the circles. With somewhat-firm resolve, you counted down and made a mostly successful run for it.

You clipped a man in the last row. Still a win in your book.

Out of breath, you collapsed onto a stool next to a stall you didn’t bother looking in first. 

“Whatchu want?” a gruff voice grunted. Steeling yourself for unavoidable social interaction, you turned to address the stall’s owner. Your response stuck in your throat as you were immediately distracted by his multitude of arms doing various things at a pace so quick it looked like juggling. “Well?”

“Uh, sorry, I actually don’t have any money…”

“‘ere.” He plunked a full cup of something in front of you which you tried not to visibly regard too suspiciously.

“Really, I don’t have-”

“‘s free.”

“Oh, um, thanks then.” You took a tentative sip and paused to assess. It tasted fruity without the telltale burn of alcohol, and you didn’t feel any worse for wear, so you figured it was probably safe enough. You gave him as genuine a smile as you could muster and settled in to watch the crowd. Fortunately, no one seemed interested in sitting still for too long, so you were, for the most part, left on your lonesome. 

“Hoo-ey!”

So much for that.

“Give us two more of whatever this stuff was.”

“I can’t believe we almost missed out on this whole shindig. Makes me almost grateful to the snake what let our bounty escape.”

Your eyes widened as you kept them fixed on the mostly full cup in front of you.

“Boit! Don’t you be sayin’ nonsense like that. You forgettin’ who’s face they put on to do it?”

“Settle down, ever’body knows it weren’t really you.”

Maybe if you moved slowly enough, they wouldn’t notice you leaving.

“Hey!”

Seriously?

You froze and through sheer force of stubborn will, raised your eyes to look at the woman who’d shouted at you. Elmae jabbed a finger in your direction. “Where’d you get the fancy dress?”

This thing was cursed. “Um, a stand in the market, I think. It was a gift.”

She responded by smacking Boit across the head hard enough to knock him into his drink. “Why don’t you ever buy me nice things like that?”

“What you need a dress for?” he sulked, rubbing his injured head. “Where you gonna wear it, huh?”

“Well, maybe if you ever took me somewhere _nice_!”

Boit squinted at you, like this was all your fault. But then he knocked your stress levels up two more notches by asking, “Do I know you?”

“Mm, not that I remember.” You took a sip of your drink, hoping the cup might hide your face some.

“You look familer.”

“Huh, that’s so weird.” More drinking.

“You ever been to Knowhere?”

“To… nowhere?” 

“Ain’t you never hearda Knowhere?”

“Maybe?” A memory tickled you too much to ignore. “I'd like to go to Morrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“It’s the hardest place I ever tried to go.”

“What're you tellin' me fer? Go hitch a ride on a ship if you're in such a big rush.” Unfortunately, you’d only made him stare at you harder, which led to more panicked drinking for you.

You were saved by a change in the music, which caused Elmae to give him another smack, on the arm this time. “I love this song! Come on, we’re dancin’!”

“Do we hafta?”

“Shut up and move them feet, you big galoot.”

You let out a sigh of relief and set down your now mostly empty cup. You noticed the bartender giving you the ol’ side eye. “I thought they’d never leave, right? Talk about a dysfunctional couple.”

He grunted, and went back to cleaning glasses, wiping the counter, moving bottles, shaking a cocktail, doing what looked like tabulations, and scratching at his stomach. You wrapped your hands around your cup, afraid he might take it away and insist you vacate his stool.

“So… heard any good jokes lately?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant YouTube video [To Morrow](https://youtu.be/Qul9zdLYUr4).


	13. No. Maybe.

After some indefinable amount of time that you could only deign ‘later,’ you were in the midst of telling your new friend a story when something appeared far too close to your shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m at a party. The innkeeper _inn_ -sisted.” You giggled and didn’t even care when Loki didn’t so much as crack a smile.

“Are you intoxicated?”

“No.” But then you let your eyes drift up as you took stock. “Maybe.”

He turned to the bartender and sounded a bit snappish when he asked, “What did you give her?”

A familiar cup was once more dropped on the counter. Loki sniffed then tasted it. His eyes narrowed in confusion. “There is no alcohol in this.”

“I knew that! I knew! Because I don’t… I don’t drink on the job.”

“We give it to children. Don’t know what’s wrong with ‘er.” The multi-limbed man eyed you, then looked back at Loki. “She ever shut up?”

“Not so far.”

“Look at how many arms he has!” you whispered but not really. “He could beat Boit at arm wrestling hands down!”

With that you dissolved into giggles again.

“All right, I think it’s time to go.” He gripped your elbow to guide you off the stool, then paused to stare down at your clothes. “Why are you wearing that?”

“The innkeeper thought we had a fight, so she made me go to the party, even though I just want to take a nap and not disturb anyone, because I’m Terran and not a space cow, and I don’t want to live in a zoo, but she just thinks I’m lazy and you’re unloved, so I had to go, and then I was trapped, but I didn’t get caught, and I had to drink so I could sit, because there’s too many people, and she’s gonna know I didn’t have any fun and be so disappointed in me.” You paused for further self-reflection, almost losing your train of thought when you realized you were walking and he was still holding your elbow. “What’s wrong with me?”

“I believe you are having some kind of allergic reaction.”

“Oh. That figures. I can’t even sit in a corner not getting drunk right.” You tripped, and his other arm came around to steady you, so that when you forced your eyes back open you were met head on with his frown. “Loki?”

“What is it?” His eyes darted around your face like they weren’t sure where to land. 

“I’m not wearing pants again.”

He sighed, which seemed like a weird reaction. “Come along, we’re almost back to the inn.”

You shifted so that you were wrapped around his arm because it felt more secure to be hanging onto something. “You’re being very nice to me.”

“I am aware.”

“You shouldn’t be so nice.”

“So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”

“Because it’s not fair. I’m not going to be nice back. I can’t, because you hurt my friends. You can’t be nice to people who hurt your friends. Bros before hoes, you know?”

“I do not.”

“I mean, you _really_ hurt them. You stabbed Phil and made Clint be a bad guy and Bruce Hulk out and Tony go to space without a spacesuit. And you blew up, like, a _bunch_ of people. And you don’t even feel bad about it! What kind of friend would I be if I was nice to you after that?”

“Far more merciful than is justified.”

“But it’s really hard not to like someone who’s always nice to you. Especially when you’re not entirely awful, even though I want you to be. It would be so much easier if there wasn’t more than that.” You looked around to find yourself back at the inn and spotted the landlady behind the counter. “Don’t worry! I found him,” you said as if that’s the reason she sent you out in the first place.

“I can see that, dear.”

“She always calls me that, but I don’t think she really thinks I’m dear.”

Loki made a quiet noise that sounded a lot like shushing you, which you did not appreciate. You would have told him so, too, but then you saw a flight of stairs and remembered you’d have to climb them. It didn’t help that they appeared to be swaying ever so slightly. Somehow (Loki? Probably Loki.) you made it to the top and then down the hall to your room. 

The next thing you knew you were lying face down on your bed and trying to breathe a blanket. You turned your head to the side and took a great gulp of air. You found Loki sitting opposite with his mouth all tight again. “Do you think it’s okay if I go back to sleep now?”

“I think that would be best.”

Your arms felt like lead, but you managed to push yourself to your side. As your numb fingers fumbled with your dress wrap, you convinced your mouth to keep forming words. “Thank you for bringing me back. I didn’t want to leave in the first place. Sorry I’m not drunk.”

“Go to sleep. Perhaps if you are lucky, you won’t remember any of this in the morning.” He suddenly stood over you, pulling the covers around to securely tuck you in, like you might fall out otherwise. And honestly, you might. 

With how sluggish you felt, you expected to drop off immediately. But every time you tried to get into your most comfortable sleeping position, your shoulder cried out in protest. This left you continually rolling back and forth like a marble in a cement mixer. 

“What is wrong now?” The lamp had been turned off, so there’s no telling how long Loki’d let you thrash about before he could no longer stand it. 

“My shoulder is mad. Probably because I keep shooting people and running it into things. Like the ground. I fall down a lot.”

“I… might be able to help.”

“Why do you sound weird?”

“Because it would involve me touching you.”

“You touch me a lot. You touched me all the way back here. I hope the landlady isn’t listening at the door.”

“And you go stiff as a stone every time.”

“I mean, you did stab me once.”

“Which is why I would understand your hesitance to voluntarily accept my hands on you now.”

“Oh, well… I guess you haven’t tried to stab me again for a couple days. And I really just want to be asleep.”

“You’ll need to sit up.”

Which was, of course, a production in itself, because your arms were still far too heavy and your head somehow roomier than it used to be. But you got up, or you must have, because you were up, and then almost back down again when the mattress dipped behind you with his weight.

“Brace yourself.”

“For what?”

One hand held near the base of your neck. The other ran over your problem shoulder for a few seconds before his fingers pressed directly into the sore muscle. There was that easily overlooked strength again. Your yelp ended up strangled as his touch abruptly flooded the area with cold.

“Holy deep tissue, Batman…”

“Am I causing you too much pain?”

“Yes. Keep doing it.”

He did, and you focused on not making too many animal noises. At least until the temperature of his touch adjusted from cold to increasingly warmer as he started to move the pressure in tight circles, and then you might have started making chocolate cake noises instead. Honestly, his massage skills were nearly as decadent.

“You should get a job doing this. You would make bank. And probably have less bounties on your head.”

“I shall bear that in mind.”

“But… but just because I appreciate you doesn’t mean I like you.”

“I believe we are clear on that point.”

“Because I can’t like you. I can’t, even though sometimes I want to. Because you’re going to stop liking me, and it’s awful to like someone who doesn’t like you back.”

“I can only imagine.”

You reached up to sloppily pat his hand by your neck. “I know, but it’s not the same for you, because it’s only awful right now, and you know it’ll go away soon. I won’t be able to use magic to stop liking the person who doesn’t like me back. And I can’t do it again, I can’t. I am sorry, I think.”

“You should try to sleep now.”

You blinked your eyes open, not knowing when they’d closed, and realized he was almost entirely holding you upright. “Okay.”

You were lying down, which made you wonder if any of that had actually happened or if you’d dreamed the interaction. But your shoulder was nice and tingly, so you figured it did. You heard the other bed let out a noise as he returned. Not wanting to be rude, you wished him good night, though you didn’t hear a reply.

Then you were jolting at a sound. There was a pain behind your right eye, and you had an unusual awareness of the size of your tongue.

You might have left your gritty eyes closed in an attempt to force yourself back into unconsciousness, but it sounded very much like someone was breaking every stick of furniture in the room. Which was odd, considering there wasn’t much to begin with, and you were lying on some of it. 

However, when you opened your eyes, you weren’t in your little rented room anymore. Instead, the room was stark white, walled on three sides with some kind of glowing, yellow screen on the fourth. Also, you appeared to be floating in midair, though you could feel your beloved mattress below you. A short distance away stood one Loki, but a glance to your side revealed another, for all appearances asleep in the only visible bed.

The standing Loki looked utterly enraged, fists clenched at his side and face awash with pain. He must have been the one breaking things, if the slight pulses of power emanating from him were any indication. His lips were moving, but it took you almost a full minute to make out his quiet mutterings amidst your confusion.

“You might want to take the stairs to the left… you might want to take the stairs to the left…”

Okay, so this was all sorts of weird and felt inappropriately invasive. You decided you should put a stop to it before he revealed something even more personal. You threw back covers you could only partially see and made to get up, quickly clutching your loose dress around your waist as it started to slip (you were still unfortunately sans pants). You stood over his unconscious form, which you then saw also looked rather distressed. 

“Hey… hey, man. You should probably wake up now.” You frowned when he didn’t stir and leaned over to jab at his shoulder. “Hey!”

His hand shot out and wrapped around the fabric of your shirt before you could react, yanking you down as he pushed himself to his elbow. He eyes wildly swept the scene around him, ignoring your one-handed attempts to loosen his fingers. His gaze locked on you, and every part of you froze at once. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! Why does it always have to be me doing something? I woke up to this. I think you were sleep projecting.”

He darted a glance at his own raging figure, and then focused back on you as his expression began to storm. “No, I refuse to believe all of this is a coincidence. What are you? What is this power you have over me that gives you access to everything I choose to hide?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t want access to anything that has to do with you!” You renewed your scrabbling at his hand, because for the first time in days you felt yourself in real danger from him.

Not only did you fail to escape, but he gave you a shake that sent your already fuzzy head spinning. “Stop lying to me!”

“Not lying,” you forced out, your jaw tight to keep your stomach contents in check.

“We’ll see about that. Let’s take a look at your most painful memories, shall we?”

“What?”

But then his palm met your forehead, and the world shifted dramatically.


	14. I already surrendered.

Your stolen car comes to a screeching halt still half in the middle of the road. Not that it matters – no traffic will be getting through any time soon. You’re out in a shot, unhampered by the seatbelt you’d never bothered to engage. You leave the door ajar as you stumble towards the wreckage, what little air you manage to pull in is marred with dust and ash and smoke.

When you’d heard the news report, you’d thought, ‘Maybe.’ If not, it would have been a pretty huge coincidence. Then you found out he’d gone to the scene, and your fears became entirely justified. Security on the Academy vehicles was laughably lax, almost as lax as the security had been on the science building.

“Phil!”

“What are you doing here?” He’s in your periphery, mouth thin.

Your eyes stay on the pile of rubble that had once been a building, now all buckled walls bringing ceilings to floors and spreading glass like a shotgun. “Is it?”

“You should go back to campus. I’ll come find you soon.”

Your fingers wrinkle his suit jacket, and his face is fuzzy. “Is it? Is it mine? Is it my f-”

So many people on stretchers. So many people not. So many under the rubble. So many under sheets. So many sirens, so many screams, so many sobs. So little air.

He doesn’t say no.

So you do. Over and over and over and over.

You jerked back, or Loki did. You blinked at him without comprehension, and then looked down at your hands like you weren’t sure if you were present or not. You were back in the room, with morning light peeking through the high, narrow window, sitting on the bed of the man who’d just forced you to relive the most painful experience you’d ever had. The dress he’d bought you sagged in your lap.

“I… I apologize. I did not intend-”

“Yes, you did.” You sniffed. The air was clear. You looked up at his remorseful expression. 

“I shouldn’t have… that was…”

“That was the worst day of my life. That’s what you were aiming for, right?”

“I was angry-”

“Obviously.” You dropped your eyes to his blanket and pressed two fingers to the pulse point on your wrist, trying to breathe your racing heart into a slower pace. “I killed so many people. I’d invented a bomb that could read the space it was in and contain the destruction within. The plan was to eradicate collateral damage. Someone stole it from the lab and used it on the ground floor of an office building, which brought the thirty floors above it crashing down. Almost everyone inside died.”

“You cannot take credit for what someone else chose to do with your invention.”

“Of course, you would phrase it like that. But you expect people to say those things, about how it’s not your fault.” Even now, you felt yourself smile. “And then there’s Phil. He showed up after I’d spent two weeks in bed and tells me I either need to reconcile what I make with what it’s going to do or I need to find a new line of work. So now I make things accessible to only certain people, people I can trust – Clint’s bow and arrows, Natasha’s widow’s bites, my gun. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. It’s how I live with what I did.”

“This Phil… you may have mentioned that he was among those I killed.”

“Stabbed through the chest, actually. But we managed to save him with some interesting alien tech. The downside is it has the tendency to make subjects go a little wackadoodle. I was supposed to be joining the team that monitors him, but, well, here we are.”

“He is important to you.”

“Immeasurably so. He was stuck with me from my recruitment. I’m sure it’s every young, single guy’s dream to be saddled with a precocious nine-year-old who thinks she’s already got the world figured out, especially when the guy is still a rookie in a super spy agency. But he was patient, even when I didn’t deserve it, which was most of the time. I hear he blasted you with one of mine.”

“I would not be surprised if that weapon was your creation.”

“Phil’s one of the few people with unrestricted access to everything I make. He’s the best man there is, and I don’t know what I’ll do if he ever really does die.” You sniffed again and cleared your throat. Then you brought your gaze back to his face to find him looking pensive. “All right, fair’s fair. You got to see my secret shame. What did I wake up in?”

His expression didn’t shift, but his eyes also wouldn’t meet yours. Eventually, he said, “I aided my mother’s murderer. The creature that killed her was held in Asgard’s prisons, and when it escaped, I gave it directions. The stairs to the left. I sent it right to her.”

“But…” Your pulse was finally beginning to slow. “You never went to prison. You ran off with the Tesseract. That’s why we’re here now.”

“Yes.”

“So you didn’t aid him. Your mother is probably still alive. You don’t need to feel guilty for something you didn’t do.”

Now he did look at you, eyes dark. “But I would have. I possess a clear memory of the event. It is not so different.”

“We’ve already established that your noggin had been tampered with, and then your father sent you to the dungeons, presumably so he wouldn’t have to deal with you anymore. You weren’t exactly in a position to make good choices.”

“She liked you, you know. Frigga,” he clarified when all you did was stare at him. “She often disobeyed Odin’s decree that she never see me again. One such time she spoke very highly of you – described you as ‘fearsome.’ Though she’s always had an appreciation for capable women, I believe more than anything she was grateful that you’d shown me kindness.”

“Well, we all make mistakes.”

His eyes dropped again, and you let out a harsh laugh and scrubbed both hands over your face. “It’s so much harder.”

“What is?”

Your hands fell to the silky material in your lap, and you gave him your most resigned smile. “This. This trying to hate you and make sure you know it. I just… I’m so tired. We have to be almost done, right?

“The books I requested are in the library’s possession, but they required some sort of processing before their release. They should be available today.”

“Okay!” You threw your hands out to either side in your excitement. “It’s decided: I quit.”

“Quit?” He seemed to be an interesting combination of confused and suspicious.

“I give up my role as quintessential antagonist. I’m not saying I’m over the whole hostile takeover, murder spree thing. But I don't want to keep picking fights at every opportunity. It's exhausting. So… partners for whatever limited time we have left together?”

“That sounds far more agreeable than your near-constant barrage of insults.”

“It wasn’t constant. And you deserved them. You tried to kill my friends and failed spectacularly.” You held up a finger in response to his raised eyebrows. “Last one. Probably.”

For once, his smile was something close to genuine. “You should get off my bed. You’re not wearing pants.”

You blinked at him a good three times before replying. “Do you have, like, a file in your brain of everything I say, just so you can quote it back to me at any given moment?”

“To be fair, you have said that one quite a bit.”

“…point you.”

“Ah, now I have three.”

You hurried through your morning routine, knowing that on the other side lay the conclusion of this little involuntary adventure. You’d finally get to go home, and Loki would get to run about the galaxies for a little while longer, which pleased you for a reason you decided not to define or even contemplate. You were close to skipping down the stairs and towards the exit, Loki trailing behind, but halfway through the lobby you pulled up so abruptly he almost ran into you.

“This them?” asked a familiar, four-armed man from his position blocking the doorway, his pink companion leaning against the wall next to him.

“It is.”

Your head whipped to the side to find the innkeeper behind her desk, face as stoic as ever. Before you could say anything, Loki’s voice cut through the air. “What is this?”

“I would think,” her hands appeared over the counter’s edge and placed your gun on the surface, “the better question is, ‘What is _this?_ ’”

You unconsciously reached for the back of your pants, which was obviously vacant. You ran your mind over the previous night and day, and realized you hadn’t taken it back out from under your pillow after your nap. You couldn’t make your expression do more than gape at the woman as you felt betrayal swell within you. “You’re really gonna do me like that?”

“I told you, dear: I am a business woman.”

“Shoulda knowed it was you las’ night. Knew you looked familer. An’ that moutha yours – hoo-ey.”

“I get criticized for my impertinence a lot, but that’s the first time it’s ever gotten a hoo-ey.” For the second time that day, your pulse began to accelerate. More crew members manifested behind you, slinking out from doorways you’d hardly bothered to acknowledge before. The landlady must have allowed them hide until the perfect dramatic moment. They cut off any visible escape routes, and probably some you hadn’t thought of yet. And you were still at least five steps away from your gun.

Where Boit seemed almost amused, Elmae was anything but. “We’ll see how mouthy you are after our captain is done with you.” 

She must be taking your impersonation personally. Maybe you should have chosen a less stereotypical interpretation.

Boit took a step forward, and your heart stumbled over a beat. But those two things happen to be unrelated. What really set your heart to skipping was a sudden pulse of _something_ that ran through you. It flared out and made the alien man stop in his tracks. His eyes shifted over your shoulder, and you felt Loki’s hand close around the back of your jacket, like that would somehow keep you from being taken. “I would think twice about what you intend to do here.”

“Is this the trouble you promised before?” asked the hulking shadow in your periphery. You wondered if Elmae had ever read his book.

“Touch her, and you will experience pain so severe you will pray for trouble.”

And we’re right back to sexy. He should not be allowed to be dashing so soon after you called truce.

“You’re bluffing.” Boit glared through narrowed eyes. “If you were so dad-blamed powerful, you wouldn’ta let her go in the ship on her lonesome.”

“Hey, he didn’t _let_ me do anything. I had to glue him to the ground to keep him from coming after me.” You couldn’t say whether you were defending yourself or him. Maybe both.

“Don’t matter none, anyhow. We’s got way more-a us than you’s got.”

“At least your math is better than your grammar.”

“By all means,” Loki’s grip relaxed, and he gave you the smallest of pushes towards the front desk, “let’s see who’s deceiving whom.”

The lobby filled with Lokies, smiling, dodging, striking out simply to watch the others flinch away. You dove for your gun as a Loki backed the innkeeper into a corner, fear causing her face to express for the first time all week. Your hand closed around your objective, and you whirled back, eyes landing on the real Loki. However, before you could call out a warning, he jerked violently and fell to the ground seizing. All the images in the room faded in a flash of light to reveal the woman you recognized as the captain of this motley crew standing over Loki’s fallen body with great interest.

“Elmae,” she said, eyes still downcast, “when there’s trouble, where do you look?”

“At the enemy, ma’am.”

“That’s right. See, the mistake girls like you make, girls who care too much about their… partners,” her gaze locked on you, “is you _always_ look at them instead.”

Something was in your throat, constricting the airflow. It was probably your heart.

“You… you win, okay? I’ll come with you, and you can take your bounty from my flesh or whatever.”

“Oh, is this making you uncomfortable?” She held up something, moved her thumb over it, and Loki had a particularly violent spasm.

“Come on, stop. I already surrendered. He didn’t break into your ship.”

“No, but the instant I release him, he’ll be back to his pretty little tricks. So I’m going to keep him locked inside himself until you’re sorted.”

“Then let’s sort me! What do you want? Take me back to your ship for torture? Big public execution?”

“Tempting, but I know what happens if I give someone like you space to think. You’ll wriggle your way right out of my grasp again, and probably find some way to save him, too. We’ll take care of this right now, right here.” She pulled a gun twice the size of yours from the holster at her hip. “Not to worry, though. We’ll hang your body in the market square, so everyone knows what I do to thieves. Any last words?”

You stared down the barrel of her gun, and then raised your gaze back to her face. “You’re right.”

That caused her pause. “What’s that?”

“You’re right. About the space to think thing.”

You had been trained in firearms from the age of nine, with a particular and almost obsessive focus on speed. Intergalactic bandit or not, this lady had nothing on your quick draw. You dove to the side as your finger curled around the trigger, ring and middle finger pressed together. Shortly, a smoldering hole developed in the desk behind you, much to the innkeeper’s dismay. You could make out the confusion on the captain’s face when she felt no immediate damage from your shot. But then, you hadn’t been aiming at her. Her eyes widened when Loki began pushing himself upright.

All the crew had their various weapons drawn now, though none seemed certain or ambitious enough to make the first move. Your attention stayed trained on Loki, hoping he had a way out of this, because the power cell in your gun was now entirely depleted.

He did, but in the end it wasn’t one you liked very much.

His eyes met yours briefly, but his face was still so wan you knew he wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. His whole body tensed, but all he said was, “Go.”

You had yet to parse that out when the Tesseract appeared before him, casting everything in a brilliant shade of blue. Then he sent it sliding across the floor, straight to where you crouched. The room dissolved in a cloud of smoke, taking with it the bounty hunters and Loki alike. When it cleared, you found yourself in darkness, though electric light slipped through the blinds of the nearby windows. Shadows took the shape of furniture in the light cast by the Tesseract – tables, chairs, a substantial couch. A siren rent the air somewhere in the distance.

Recognition took your legs out from under you, and you sat down hard on the dingy carpet of your apartment’s living room.


	15. I think I'm having a panic attack.

Okay, so you’re home. On earth. In your apartment. With one of the universe’s most powerful objects lying on the floor and Loki probably being tortured however many galaxies away. Because of you, because of something you did, because you hadn’t handled the problem cleanly enough. 

Okay, so you’re panicking. 

You found your pulse, watched a nearby clock as you counted heartbeats. Yeah, definitely panicking. 

Breathe. 

Breathe. 

Breathe. 

Out too! Breathe out too! 

Maybe this was the real reason you didn’t do a lot of field work. 

Okay. All right. Okay. 

You have a problem. You fix problems. You’re good at fixing problems. What’s the most immediate problem you can solve?

Your eyes land on the gun at your side. Its power cell is dead. You can fix that. 

Yeah, you can fix that. 

You lurched to your feet and almost fell over again from the head rush. Balance regained, you turned to a nearby wall and ran your finger over a seemingly random area. A keypad lit up, awaiting your PIN and then a fingerprint scan. With a hiss of air pressure release, the wall moved to the side, and you walked into your personal lab. 

A short while later you walked out again, heartbeat regulated and what you affectionately call your utility belt secured around your waist. You pause next to the glowing Tesseract, so conspicuous in your ordinary New York apartment. You eyed it warily, crouching down to get a better look. 

“All right, buddy, I’m going to show you all the respect and reverence, and you’re not going to turn me inside out. Deal?”

You weren’t 100% sure how this thing worked (or any percent, honestly), but you just had to hope focusing on Loki was enough of a location determinant. And also that the stone realized you didn’t actually want to end up _inside_ of Loki. Or, you know, have all your molecules scattered across space. 

“Okay, okay, this is such a bad idea, let’s go.”

You pressed your hands to either side of the cube. 

Unfortunately, you squeezed your eyes shut at the same time, so you couldn’t be certain whether the drop in your stomach was from intergalactic teleportation, untimely demise, or your brain playing tricks on you. 

“Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead…” You cracked one eye open and recognized the familiar innards of the bounty hunters’ spaceship. Both fists pumped the air at your triumph. “Winner!”

Then you realized you probably should be quieter, considering this was supposed to be a covert rescue mission.

The cube had done a fantastic job and dropped you right at Loki’s feet. He appeared to be suspended in some kind of stasis field, though even in forced unconsciousness, he looked pale and worn. You were right to suspect the bounty hunters would take out their frustration on him. You wondered if they’d figured out what a boon they’d captured yet. How much would Asgard pay for its wayward prince?

You didn’t have a Tesseract shaped pouch on your belt, so you’d brought along an old hand towel which you used to (carefully) wrap it up and tie it on. Then you turned your attention to your prisoner problem. 

Fortunately, this time you’d come fully prepared. 

You located the control panel and attached a small device which lit up with furiously scrolling numbers. Then a green light flashed with a ding, and the stasis field immediately vanished. This had the unfortunate side effect of dumping the man inside directly to the floor. 

Oops. 

He was in the process of trying to push himself upright by the time you reached his side, but his arms were shaking so badly he didn’t look quite up to the task. You dropped next to him, trying to support him while at the same time getting your hand on his face to turn it towards you. 

“Hey, hey, are you okay? I mean, obviously not, but where do you fall on a scale of tap dancing at Carnegie to knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door?”

“I would be inclined to think this a hallucination, but I don’t believe I could so accurately conjure your nonsense.”

“I see your sass level hasn’t been dampened any.” You patted his cheek a few times, hoping he couldn’t sense how worried you truly were. “Come on, open up, I need to check your pupils.”

He obliged, eyes so bright against his waxy skin. Bright and disbelieving and disappointed and working up to angry. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know, got bored. Thought I’d swing by and see what I missed.”

“I sent you to safety.”

“And it didn’t take.”

“If you are discovered-”

“I’ll end up looking like you? Dude, you don’t get to take on the consequences for my actions. That wasn’t the agreement. Besides, I have a plan.” You could have said he reacted to this assertion with incredulity, but that would be a significant understatement. “No, really, I do this time. You just wait and see.”

“Hold it right there!”

Loki sighed and leaned into your hold a bit more until his forehead met your shoulder. “Was getting caught outright step one?”

“It wasn’t _not_ step one.” You dropped your hand to the towel, wriggling a couple fingers through one of the openings. “Beam us up, Scotty.”

You might have heard a laser as the cloud enveloped you, but it was too late. A gust of wind hit you as you rematerialized at the edge of the canyon, and Loki looked up in surprise, “How…?”

You cracked open your MacGyvered sack so he could see the glow within. “Say hello to my little friend.”

He was close to openly gaping at you, which was sort of discomforting. You shrugged and let the towel fall closed again, employing your best Elle Woods impersonation. “I figured it out. What, like it’s hard?”

“You are impossible.”

“Also something that’s been written on my report card. Here, you better take this thing back.” You undid the knot and presented him with the Tesseract cradled in a ratty, old towel. “We have a tentative agreement, but I still don’t trust it not to turn me into star dust.”

The cube vanished as soon as it touched his hands, and you tucked the now empty towel into one of your pants' many pockets. “Can you stand?”

He could, slowly and a bit unsteadily. Still, he stared at you as if you were somehow incomprehensible. “Why did you return?”

“Seriously? I thought we already covered this.”

“I understand that you have come to my aid, but I cannot fathom as to why. You have pleaded incessantly for me to send you home.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t like how you did it.” You adjusted your jacket even though it was your skin that felt too tight. “I want to go home when we’ve fixed the problem, not because you’ve suddenly turned into a self-sacrificial nut job.”

“I saved your life, and that makes me mad?”

“Yes! That’s the whole reason you kidnapped me in the first place! Putting yourself in danger on my behalf and weakness and all that. Remember?”

He blinked, looking startled, like the parallels never occurred to him. And truly, they probably hadn’t. Poor guy was so far gone he couldn’t tell up from down anymore. 

“Don’t worry. We’re going to pick up those books and fix it. We just have to take care of one more thing first.”

As if on cue, the air filled with the deafening noise of an approaching spacecraft. The looming visage of the bounty hunters’ ship came into view, the wind it kicked up so strong that Loki had to grab hold of your elbow to keep you upright. Even before it landed, crew members dropped to the ground, leveling all manner of weapons and firing them at you. 

However, as previously established, you’d come prepared. 

Lasers bounced off your gun’s shield as you pulled a handful of small spheres from your belt. You chucked them, and as they landed small bursts of electricity sent multiple assailants to the ground, stiff as planks of wood. From your periphery you saw daggers appear in both Loki’s hands. He must have felt your attention, because he nodded once without taking his eyes off the advancing hoard. You shifted your fingers, and the shield became a widespread beam, knocking a large swath back. And then the rest were upon you. 

Yet, the fight was almost easy. Somehow you and Loki were on exactly the same wavelength, sharing one brain, moving together as one, whatever analogy you wanted. Even as you moved farther apart, you shot someone at his back, he threw a dagger at the one in front of you, which you pulled out by kicking him away, and then tossed to Loki just in time for him to take a chunk out of someone else. You couldn’t have choreographed anything this smooth. 

Still, you were two against a multitude, and eventually something got past. It was small – you hardly noticed when it landed at your feet, but a flash of light later and your arms were glued to your sides tighter than an Irish dancer’s. A short distance away, Loki was disarmed and restrained, some kind of glowing sword pointed at his chin. 

“I am almost impressed.” The captain strode through the crowd towards you. “Under other circumstances, this could have been a conversation about recruitment. Except you keep making the same mistakes. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist coming back to rescue him. You fell right into my trap.”

Your gun was already pointed downward, so all you had to do was squeeze the trigger to blast the thing at your feet. Those around you tensed as your posture relaxed, but your aim remained on the ground. However, you raised your other hand to present a quarter-sized, blinking circle between your fingers. “Are you talking about this?”

The captain paused, brow furrowed, so you continued, jerking your head in Loki’s direction. “I pulled it off him before we teleported.”

“Then why…?”

“We need to have a conversation, and I figured this was as good a way as any to let you know the top secret meeting place.” You tossed the tracker to the side and shot it, too. 

The other woman let out a choked laugh. “I prefer letting my gun do all the talking.”

“Because that worked so well the last time.” You barely twitched the hand holding your gun, but her eyes briefly fell to it anyway. 

“Are you really willing to risk getting a shot off with a blade so close to his throat?”

“He’s fine.” You looked over to Loki, in direct juxtaposition to the captain’s nearly unwavering stare. “You’re fine, aren’t you?”

“Not necessarily the word I’d choose, but not entirely inaccurate, I suppose.”

“See? Fine.”

She looked between you, stoic expression wavering with her bafflement. “Are the two of you delusional? Can you not see the predicament you are in?”

“Nah, he’s just figured out what my plan is.”

“Plan?”

“It’s taking longer than I thought it would. I didn’t expect to have to banter this long.”

Everyone stood in silence as you maintained your stare down with the now blatantly incredulous captain. She broke first, “You-”

A loud, unidentifiable groan cut her off, and you felt your mouth pull into what was a probably an obnoxiously smug smirk. Her eyes widened as a tremor shook the ground, followed by a sharp _CRACK_ and a lot of shouting. She whirled to see her ship tilt precariously to the right, dust flying up from beneath, turning her frantic men into shadows as they scurried about. The cacophony continued as it dropped, tilted back the other way, and eventually crashed below the surface entirely. Fissures spread out from the new crater, taking those who were too slow to move down with the ship. 

The other woman turned back and found your gun pointed at her face. The sword at Loki’s throat became a snake, which its bearer immediately dropped, leaving Loki free to dispatch the men restraining him. The captain looked between the two of you, all pretense of calm control completely gone. 

“I did not steal from you,” your voice was as steady as your aim, “because people are not commodities, not even the ones who look like furry, woodland creatures. So there’s no debt to be repaid here, flesh or otherwise. And if you ever come after me or mine again, I will do so much worse than sink your battleship. Do we understand each other?”

She stared, breathing hard, for another few seconds before she made a motion with her hand that had everyone but you lowering their weapons. She looked you up and down once more, and then turned and headed for the hole containing her ship. One by one, the other crew members followed, including one who retrieved his sword from the ground with a great deal of suspicion. 

Finally, you let your arm fall to your side. You turned your face towards Loki, giving him a smile awash with exhaustion, because as big a game as you talked, the whole day had been more than stressful. He began to return your smile, but then his eyes darted behind you and his expression shifted to concern bordering on outright fear. You started to turn, but a massive hand closed around the fabric at your shoulder. Even as you twisted, wrenching your arm partially free of your jacket, you tried to raise your gun, but the hand’s twin grabbed hold of your wrist and held it above your head. 

With little thought you pulled the trigger, letting off a shot into the air. The recoil went straight into the man's face with an audible crunch. He staggered back, grip yanking you with him. You tore your arm completely from your sleeve, pivoting in his hold to see the poor, book-loving giant about to kill you both. 

The entire world vanished behind the sound of your heartbeat and the vision of him tilting precariously over the edge of the canyon. Pure animal instinct had you wrenching yourself back, your other arm sliding from your sleeve until the fabric caught on your gun. Then your hand was empty and you were stumbling away, watching the man disappear over the edge, your coat flapping like a flag of surrender. 

You stared at the empty landscape, and then turned back to seek out Loki’s gaze, like you needed confirmation that you were still there and hadn’t actually tumbled into the canyon as well. He stood frozen, staring back at you with an expression of abject horror. Then something new washed over his expression, and with a few purposeful strides he stood before you, his hands landed on either side of your face, and he pulled you forward as he dipped to kiss you full on the mouth. 

Your eyes shut, mostly on reflex, but beyond that you made no move. Something flashed through your mind, like déjà vu, a memory of another kiss in a dark room surrounded by endless stars. Impossible. You’d never been to space. And you’d definitely never been kissed like this. 

It only lasted the span of a breath. Or, in your current case, about three to four far-too rapid breaths. He held your forehead pressed to his, and you felt that his breathing was faster, too. “You must stop this unceasing courtship with catastrophe.”

The moment held as you tried to sort the jumble in your brain into something understandable and then somehow translate that to your near catatonic physical body. “I lost my gun.”

Breath hit your face in what might have been a laugh. “You will make another.”

“Yeah.” You swallowed, reached numb arms up to grab hold of his wrists. “I think I’m having a panic attack.”

He straightened, and your eyes shot back open. One of his hands released you to loosen the collar of his shirt, awkward when your own grip didn’t abate. Then he twisted his hand to grab hold of yours and pressed it to the cool, bare skin over his heart, also beating quickly though nowhere near the speed of yours. “Breathe as I do.”

This much eye contact this close so soon after he kissed you should have been disconcerting, probably would have been if you weren’t otherwise occupied. But his methods worked, and you felt the beating of your heart become progressively less painful. Somewhere in the distance you heard a familiar voice yell, “How come you never kiss me like that?”

“Try fallin’ off that cliff and maybe I will!”

Your chuckle was dry and cracked, which Loki answered with a smile, fingers flexing near your hairline.

“So… library?”


	16. You don't get to decide where I belong.

“No, you weren’t, like, super _in_ to the other horse. You just had to distract him because you made a bet, and you were about to lose the sun, moon, and that really hot goddess Freya, and all the other gods were pissed.”

“There are far simpler ways to distract a horse than by becoming one.”

“You can’t Occam’s razor myths, dude. Especially when the people want some hot god-on-horse action.”

The library was dark and cool, a stark contrast to the fight whose dust you still wore. That familiar smell of books washed over you once more, and you felt some of the remaining tension leave your shoulders. You hoped the librarian would hand over your order without asking any questions, despite your appearance. You had no patience to wait for Loki to flirt his way through again.

“Your people spend an absurd amount of time-” He was cut off by a flash of light that knocked him to the ground. Startled, you merely stared at the glowing field which now enclosed him, emanating from five points circling him. Crystals, maybe? 

“Stand back, mortal.” A voice ordered with enough bass to feel in your bones. Men in golden armor appeared from ever shadow, looking tall and regal and terribly intimidating. Except this was your second ambush in one day, and you were definitely over it. 

“Who are you?” Someone bereft of weapon probably shouldn’t start off so snappish. 

One of the men, especially tall, stepped forward. “We are the royal guardsmen of Asgard. We are here to apprehend this fugitive and return you to your world.”

Inside his prison, Loki rose to crouch, shaking his head like a stunned dog. His gaze found the surrounding men, and his mouth dropped into a frown. Still, he didn’t appear as if he was about to put up a struggle. His eyes were dull, and his mouth remained pressed tight. For once, his silver tongue stayed silent. Most tellingly, perhaps, he never looked in your direction. The man was giving up.

“I say again: stand back.”

“No.”

“Pardon?”

You’d never looked away from Loki, so you got the full impact of his shocked expression, his eyes wide and almost fearful. You arched an eyebrow, and then turned your attention to the perplexed guard. “We’re in the middle of something. You’ll have to wait your turn.”

You thought you might have heard Loki whisper your name, possibly in warning though you were too distracted thinking that this was the first time he’d ever said it. The guard appeared to be getting agitated. “We were sent by the Allfather-”

“I really don’t care.”

“By order of the King of Asgard-”

“He’s not the king of me.”

“You will hold your tongue!” He slammed his staff against the floor for emphasis as his face turned an interesting shade of red.

“Yeah, I don’t see that happening.”

“Move aside or you will join in his arrest.”

“Try me.”

“Stop!” Loki’s voice sounded muffled through his containment. He stood, both hands raised. “I surrender. Return her to where she belongs, and I will come quietly.”

You scoffed. “Like you ever do anything quietly.”

“Despite all your natural inclinations, will you simply shut up and do as you’re told?” He hissed, to which you shrugged slightly.

“Not likely.”

The head guardsman stepped forward and leveled his spear. “This is your last warning-”

Posture shifting in an instant, you whipped the hand towel from your pocket and wrapped it around the spear’s end. The with a twist and a spin, you twirled it in your own hand and pointed it back in his direction. “You were saying?”

The man looked astounded, but that quickly morphed into anger probably fueled by embarrassment. “You align yourself with this criminal?”

“I prefer not to put labels on things.”

“Then you seal your fate.”

“I guess we’ll see. But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that fate is a lot more malleable than we all thought.”

You turned and brought the staff down on one of the crystals creating Loki’s entrapment. It shattered, taking with it the field that held him. The next second was filled with a dizzying number of images, places flashing by almost simultaneously. And then it all stopped at once, and you and Loki stood alone in a field of unknown origin.

He wrenched the spear from your hands, face pale and angry. “Have you any idea what you’ve done?”

“Initiated a dramatic escape with an inspirational one-liner?”

“And damned yourself in the process! They will believe you to be in league with me-”

“I am in league with you.”

“Be silent!” It was almost a roar and made your spine straighten on reflex. He seemed to catch himself, and his next words were calmer. “Just this once be silent and listen. I have made countless mistakes in my life, but chief among them has been the disservice I’ve done to you. I have hurt you in ways unforgivable, and now I have bound you to me so that you too will burn. The only redemption for me is to return you to Midgard so you may explain to your friends and seek their protection from Odin. I will suffer no further arguments.”

“Yeah, you’re gonna suffer a few.”

“You must-” 

“I _must_ do nothing. I _choose_ to stay.” You took a step forward so that you were inches away, though the intimidation would be more effective if you didn’t have to glare up at such a sharp angle. “You don’t get to decide where I belong.”

“What do you expect we’ll do? The books are lost to us now.” He managed to sound more resigned than desperate.

“You’re a god, and I’m clever. I expect we’ll figure something out. And I’m not afraid of a few As-guardsmen.”

He shook his head slowly. “You fear so little of what you should. It’s going to get you killed.”

“Probably. But not today.” You elected not to correct him, in that you feared just about everything, most of all him. 

He stared down at you, eyes jumping between yours. You had a hard time getting a read on his emotions, probably because he was having a hard time deciding what to feel.

“Why? Why would you choose to stay with me?”

You hesitated. You hadn’t quite worked it out for yourself. Finally, you settled on, “You deserve a lot of things, most of which I’m not equipped to provide. But peace of mind… that’s something I can help with.”

And still he stared, waiting for the other shoe, the rug pull, the made you look. You tried to look patient and sincere, but it’s very hard to sincerely look sincere. His next words were quiet and extraordinarily soft, almost as if he spoke to himself. “I believe I am beginning to understand.”

“What?”

His hand came up, slowly so that you had the opportunity to step away. His fingers whispered over the line of your jaw and settled into your hair. Then he leaned down to press his forehead to yours.

Images flashed through your mind. His fingers brushing yours as he accepted his drink. Eyes meeting across the throne room as he was led away in chains. His chained hands steadying you as you fought to control the massive ship. Dark Elves falling as the two of you fought in sync. His arms around you as you were thrown from the Bifrost. Shared looks over drinks as an alien chattered away, unaware of your inattention. Your smile as he arrives with a ship full of Sakaaran prisoners. You in his arms again, bloody but triumphant, and then your hand on his arm as you wish him luck. Your welcome that bordered on affection and ended with a kiss that seemed a prelude to many more. The last look shared between you as you were parted for the final time.

All these passed before you like a montage, kindnesses you’d never given, moments of connection you’d never shared. An ache developed deep inside of you, and you wondered if some of the emotions sent back to him were now seeping into you. You felt him retreat, and only then did you realize your eyes had closed. You blinked, found his face smooth and blank but his eyes watching carefully for your reaction, to see if you understood as well. 

“So…” You swallowed down everything, packed it into a ball somewhere behind your ribs to be picked apart later when it wasn't so fresh and you weren't so raw. “Where to next?”


	17. Preview

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick preview of the final installment in this series.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

Tony glared at the screen instead of Steve, who had been asking variations of that question for months. “It’s the same play as what S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted Banner to do in the beginning. Except this time, we lock on to the gamma radiation and redirect the flow.”

“And you’re sure it’s safe?” Clint was pulled tighter than his bow string, regularly shifting his weight from foot to foot. 

“Obviously.” Tony paused as Clint fidgeted again, and then added in a quieter tone, “You’re not the only one who wants her back in one piece.”

“One piece might be hoping for too much.” Natasha’s voice was deceptively even. “She’s been held hostage by a madman for almost a year.”

“If that is truly what she is.”

Tony’s frown deepened as he checked levels that didn’t need checking. “It is.”

“I have told you before of the reports we’ve received on Asgard. Even my own men agree that she now accompanies my brother willingly, goes so far as to protect him from his pursuers.”

“And I told you the reports are wrong. You don’t know her like we do, Point Break. She wouldn’t do that.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps she is no longer someone you would recognize.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Steve cut in before Tony could let his temper run his mouth. “First we need to get them both back here.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Rhodey leaned against a table, ankles and arms crossed. 

“We’ve locked on to the Tesseract’s signal,” Bruce’s quiet voice came from behind another screen, “But we can’t activate it ourselves. They need to make a jump before we can do anything.”

“Then why exactly are we all here?”

“Lady Sif and the Warriors Three are closing in on their current location. If they wish to avoid capture, they will be forced to flee once more.”

“Should I be suited up for this?”

“Not if everything goes to plan.” Natasha stepped into Tony’s periphery, hand on her chin as she scrutinized the screens. “But stay on your toes. We don’t know for sure what he’s capable of.”

“Or she, if the stories are to be believed.”

Tony felt the thin fibers of his patience snapping. “I already told you-”

A buzzer sounded, and various screens began to flash. Tony reigned himself in. “Showtime, everybody.”

Each of them tensed as Tony and Bruce’s movements became quicker. A sound filled the room, like rushing water, and the air pressure rose significantly. Then, with a boom and a burst of light, two figures appeared in the room's center. Thor released Mjolnir immediately, launching it into his brother’s chest and throwing the man into a familiar glass cube. He called the hammer back to his hand as Tony hit the button that secured the cell. 

Loki safely contained, the whole room seemed to hold its breath as you tore your eyes away from him to look at the rest of them somewhat apprehensively. “Hey guys. How’s it going?”


End file.
